THE SUBTROPICAL GARDEN.
_Works by the same Author._
=ALPINE FLOWERS FOR ENGLISH GARDENS.= With 70 Illustrations.
=THE WILD GARDEN=, or our Groves and Shrubberies made beautiful by
the naturalisation of hardy exotic plants. With _Frontispiece_.
=MUSHROOM CULTURE=: its Extension and Improvement. With
Illustrations.
_Nearly Ready._
=HARDY FLOWERS; or, HERBACEOUS, BULBOUS, AND ALPINE PLANTS.= This
will be the most comprehensive and practically instructive book
ever published on these plants. With Frontispiece.
=A CATALOGUE OF CULTIVATED HARDY PERENNIALS, BULBS, ANNUALS=, etc.,
including also all British Plants. Prepared for the purpose of
facilitating exchanges, &c., and enumerating nearly 10,000 hardy
exotic and British plants.
[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE.]
THE
SUBTROPICAL GARDEN;
OR,
BEAUTY OF FORM IN THE
FLOWER GARDEN.
BY W. ROBINSON, F.L.S.,
AUTHOR OF ‘ALPINE FLOWERS,’ ‘THE WILD GARDEN,’ ‘HARDY FLOWERS,’ ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1871.
_The right of Translation is reserved._
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET
AND CHARING CROSS.
PREFACE.
This book is written with a view to assist the newly-awakened taste for
something more than mere colour in the flower-garden, by enumerating,
describing, indicating the best positions for, and giving the culture
of, all our materials for what is called “subtropical gardening.” This
not very happy, not very descriptive name, is adopted from its
popularity only; fortunately for our gardens numbers of subjects not
from subtropical climes may be employed with great advantage.
Subtropical gardening means the culture of plants with large and
graceful or remarkable foliage or habit, and the association of them
with the usually low-growing and brilliant flowering-plants now so
common in our gardens, and which frequently eradicate every trace of
beauty of form therein, making the flower-garden a thing of large masses
of colour only.
The guiding aim in this book has been the selection of really suitable
subjects, and the rejection of many that have been recommended and tried
for this purpose. This point is more important than at first sight would
appear, for in most of the literature hitherto devoted to the subject
plants entirely unsuitable are named. Thus we find such things as Alnus
glandulosa aurea and Ulmus campestris aurea (a form of the common elm)
enumerated among subtropical plants by one author. Manifestly if these
are admissible almost every species of plant is equally so. These belong
to a class of variegated hardy subjects that have been in our gardens
for ages, and have nothing whatever to do with subtropical gardening.
Two other classes have also purposely been omitted: very tender
stove-plants, many of which have been tried in vain in the Paris and
London Parks, and such things as Echeveria secunda, which though
belonging to a type frequently enumerated among subtropical plants, are,
more properly, subjects of the bedding class. But if I have excluded
many that I know to be unsuitable, every type of the vegetation of
northern and temperate countries has been searched for valuable kinds;
and as no tropical or subtropical subject that is really effective has
been omitted, the result is the most complete selection that is possible
from the plants now in cultivation.
No pains have been spared to show by the aid of illustrations the beauty
of form displayed by the various types of plants herein enumerated. For
some of the illustrations I have to thank MM. Vilmorin and Andrieux, the
well-known Parisian firm; for others, the proprietors of the ‘Field;’
while the rest are from the graceful pencil of Mr. Alfred Dawson, and
engraved by Mr. Whymper and Mr. W. Hooper. I felt that engravings would
be of more than their usual value in this book, inasmuch as they place
the best attainable result before the reader’s eye, thus enabling him to
arrange his materials more efficiently. A small portion of the matter of
this book originally appeared in my book on the gardens of Paris, in
which it will not again be printed. For the extensive list of the
varieties of Canna I am indebted to M. Chatè’s “_Le Canna_.” Most of the
subjects have been described from personal knowledge of them, both in
London and Paris gardens.
W. R.
_April 3, 1871._
CONTENTS.
PART I.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 1