[Contents.] [List of Illustrations]
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THE SUBTROPICAL GARDEN.

Works by the same Author.
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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.



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]
[PART II.]
DESCRIPTION, ARRANGEMENT, CULTURE, ETC., OFSUITABLE SPECIES, HARDY AND TENDER, ALPHABETICALLYARRANGED[43]
[PART III.]
SELECTIONS OF PLANTS FOR VARIOUS PURPOSES[221]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Separate plates to face the pages given.

PAGE
[Frontispiece]—Hardy and tender Plants in the Subtropical Garden.
Cannas in a London park[13]
Anemone japonica alba[17]
Group and single specimens of plants isolated on the grass[23]
Portion of plan showing Yuccas, etc.[25]
Formal arrangements in London parks[26]
Tree Ferns and other Stove Plants[28]
Ailantus and Cannas[30]
Young Conifers, etc.[32]
Gourds[34]
Section of raised bed at Battersea[40]
Acanthus latifolius[47]
Aralia canescens[58]
Aralia japonica[60]
Aralia papyrifera[61]
Asplenium Nidus-avis[70]
Bambusa aurea[72]
Bambusa falcata[74]
Berberis nepalensis[79]
Blechnum brasiliense[80]
Bocconia cordata[81]
Buphthalmum speciosum[83]
Caladium esculentum[84]
Colocasia odorata[85]
Canna[86]
Carlina acaulis[110]
Caryota sobolifera[111]
Centaurea babylonica[112]
Chamædorea[114]
Chamærops excelsa[116]
Cycas[120]
Tree Fern[123]
Dimorphanthus mandschuricus[124]
Erianthus Ravennæ[132]
Ferula communis[136]
Ficus elastica[139]
Gynerium argenteum[142]
Gunnera scabra[144]
Heracleum[147]
Malva crispa[153]
Melianthus major[155]
Monstera deliciosa[156]
Montagnæa heracleifolia[157]
Morina longifolia[158]
Mulgedium alpinum[159]
Musa Ensete[160]
Nicotiana Tabacum[163]
Onopordum Acanthium[164]
Poa fertilis[174]
Rheum Emodi[178]
Rhus glabra laciniata[180]
Seaforthia elegans[185]
Solanum robustum[190]
Solanum Warscewiczii[195]
Uhdea bipinnatifida[205]
Wigandia macrophylla[208]
Yucca filamentosa[212]
Yucca pendula[214]
Yucca filamentosa variegata[217]

PART I.