Coral-stone and Palm , the Homes of Bermuda 
The entrance walks are usually edged with 
cool green box ; and carriage turns are in the 
more careful plans arranged to the northeast, 
so that their wider glare may not reflect the 
sun into the living-rooms. There is enough 
summer in most parts ot the United States 
to make this an example worth considering 
in grounds of ordinary dimensions. The error 
ot using up an excessive proportion of availa¬ 
ble space in complicated walks and drives is 
less common in Bermuda than farther north. 
The Islands afford a rare opportunity, less 
often utilized than it should be, for water 
gardening. Upon low-lying sites near the 
sea, one has but to scoop out the basic rock 
below r sea level to have his ponds and moats 
fill with exquisitely clear salt water that rises 
and falls with the tides and in which fish, that 
rival in coloring the flowers of the garden, 
thrive mightily. A visit to any aquarium 
reveals the wonderful possibilities of the 
island fishes; perhaps a dozen or more fine 
country-seats have made use of the stolid 
“grouper,” the flaming “parrot fish” and 
the translucent “ angel fish ” as adjuncts 
of their formal ponds and water alleys. And 
there are several places which utilize in larger 
sheets of water the uncanny growth of those 
amphibious puzzles, the mangroves, which 
bury their branches as well as their roots in 
the water and thus gradually encroach upon 
it. Fresh-water plants can only be raised by 
providing ponds with impervious bottoms 
and suitable soil on top of that. 
Idle early settlers in Bermuda found 
almost nothing but the cedar. They took 
there everything they knew, every homely 
plant of home gardens, and more slowly 
added the growths of the tropics. Almost 
anything that will grow anywhere will grow 
here. It is as if the wealth of Kew, or Fair- 
mount, or the Bronx were turned out of 
doors to riot with the sturdy flowers of New 
England and Old England. A hedge of 
sweet peas and a great bed of Faster lilies 
will be in bloom at the same time. Convol¬ 
vulus takes its noon nap in the shade of 
banana plants, whose long narrow leaves are 
forever split and battered by the wind. 
Oranges and lemons—ornamentally rather 
than commercially used—gleam golden in the 
foliage, and the pawpaw tree towers high 
above sugar-cane patches. Pride-of-India 
trees shade the streets of Hamilton and huge 
mahogany and india-rubber trees are among 
the occasional ornaments of private grounds. 
But always it is the palm, in some one of its 
many forms, that rises from the foreground 
to give the aspect of planted groupings an 
exotic look ; and ever in the background 
lurks the cedar, as if to remind the observer 
that it is after all the “ oldest inhabitant ” 
—as it is one of the most beautiful. 
John Langdon Heaton. 
I 74 
