What much interested us in St. Augustine was to see the results of such wealth and care as are expended at the North on gardening being brought to bear upon gardens in this semi-tropical region. As yet, all that we have seen in Florida has been the beginning of industrial experiments, where utility has been the only thing consulted, and where there has been neither time nor money to seek the ornamental. Along the St. John's you can see, to-day, hundreds of places torn from the forest, yet showing the unrotted stumps of the trees; the house standing in a glare of loose white sand, in which one sinks over shoes at every step. If there be a flower-garden (and, wherever there is a woman, there will be), its prospects in the loose sliding sands appear discouraging. Boards and brick-edgings are necessary to make any kind of boundaries; and a man who has to cut down a forest, dig a well, build a house, plant an orange-grove, and meanwhile raise enough garden-stuff to pay his way, has small time for the graces.
But here in St. Augustine are some families of wealth and leisure, driven to seek such a winter-home, who amuse themselves during their stay in making that home charming; and the results are encouraging.
In the first place, the slippery sand-spirit has been caught, and confined under green grass-plats. The grass problem has been an earnest study with us ever since we came here. What grass will bear a steady blaze of the sun for six months, with the thermometer at a hundred and thirty or forty, is a question. It is perfectly easy, as we have proved by experiment, to raise flattering grass-plats of white clover, and even of the red-top, during the cool, charming months of January, February, and March; but their history will be summed up in the scriptural account—"which to day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven"—as soon as May begins.
The chances of an enduring sod for ornamental purposes are confined to two varieties,—the broad and the narrow leafed Bermuda grasses. These have roots that run either to the centre of the earth, or far enough in that direction for practical purposes; and are, besides, endowed with the faculty of throwing out roots at every joint, so that they spread rapidly. The broad-leafed kind is what is principally employed in St. Augustine; and we have seen beautifully-kept gardens where it is cut into borders, and where the grass-plats and croquet-grounds have been made of it to admirable advantage. A surface of green in this climate is doubly precious to the eye.
We were visiting in a house which is a model for a hot climate. A wide, cool hall runs through the centre; and wide verandas, both above and below, go around the whole four sides. From these we could look down at our leisure into the foliage of a row of Magnolia grandiflora, now in blossom. Ivy, honeysuckles, manrundia, and a host of other climbing-plants, make a bower of these outside corridors of the house. The calla-lilies blossom almost daily in shaded spots; and beds of fragrant blue violets are never without flowers. Among the ornamental shrubbery we noticed the chaparral,—a thorny tree, with clusters of yellow blossoms, and long, drooping, peculiar leaves, resembling in effect the willow-leafed acacia. The banana has a value simply as an ornamental-leaf plant, quite apart from the consideration of its fruit, which one can buy, perhaps, better than one can raise, in this part of Florida; but it is glorious, when the thermometer is going up into the hundreds, to see the great, fresh, broad, cool leaves of the banana-tree leaping into life, and seeming to joy in existence. In groups of different sizes, they form most beautiful and effective shrubbery. The secret of gardening well here is to get things that love the sun. Plants that come originally from hot regions, and that rejoice the hotter it grows, are those to be sought for. The date-palm has many beautiful specimens in the gardens of St. Augustine. A date-palm, at near view, is as quaint and peculiar a specimen of Nature as one can imagine. Its trunk seems built up of great scales, in which ferns and vines root themselves, and twine and ramble, and hang in festoons. Above, the leaves, thirty feet long, fall in a feathery arch, and in the centre, like the waters of a fountain, shoot up bright, yellow, drooping branches that look like coral. These are the flower-stalks. The fruit, in this climate, does not ripen so as to be good for any thing.
One gentleman showed me a young palm, now six feet high, which he had raised from a seed of the common shop date, planted four years ago. In this same garden he showed me enormous rose-trees, which he had formed by budding the finest of the Bourbon ever-blooming roses in the native Florida rose. The growth in three years had been incredible; and these trees are an ever-springing fountain of fresh roses. There is a rose-tree in St. Augustine, in a little garden, which all the sight-seers go to see. It is a tree with a trunk about the size of an ordinary man's arm, and is said to have had a thousand roses on it at a time. Half that number will answer our purpose; and we will set it down at that. Rose-slugs and rose-bugs are pests unheard of here. The rose grows as in its native home. One very pretty feature of the houses here struck me agreeably. There is oftentimes a sort of shaded walk under half the house, opening upon the garden. You go up a dusty street, and stand at a door, which you expect will open into a hall. It opens, and a garden full of flowers and trees meets your view. The surprise is delightful. In one garden that we visited we saw a century-plant in bud. The stalk was nineteen feet high; and the blossoms seemed to promise to be similar to those of the yucca. The leaves are like the aloe, only longer, and twisted and contorted in a strange, weird fashion. On the whole, it looked as if it might have been one of the strange plants in Rappicini's garden in Padua.
The society in St. Augustine, though not extensive, is very delightful. We met and were introduced to some very cultivated, agreeable people. There is a fair prospect that the city will soon be united by railroad to Jacksonville, which will greatly add to the facility and convenience of living there. We recrossed the railroad at Tekoi, on our way home, in company with a party of gentlemen who are investigating that road with a view of putting capital into it, and so getting it into active running order. One of them informed me that he was also going to Indian River to explore, in view of the projected plan to unite it with the St. John's by means of a canal. Very sensibly he remarked, that, in order to really make up one's mind about Florida, one should see it in summer; to which we heartily assented.
By all these means this beautiful country is being laid open, and made accessible and inhabitable as a home and refuge for those who need it.
On the steamboat, coming back, we met the Florida Thoreau of whom we before spoke,—a devoted, enthusiastic lover of Nature as she reveals herself in the most secluded everglades and forests. He supports himself, and pays the expenses of his tours, by selling the curiosities of Nature which he obtains to the crowd of eager visitors who throng the hotels in winter. The feathers of the pink curlew, the heron, the crane, the teeth of alligators, the skins of deer, panther, and wild-cat, are among his trophies. He asserted with vehemence that there were varieties of birds in Florida unknown as yet to any collection of natural history. He excited us greatly by speaking of a pair of pet pink curlews which had been tamed; also of a snow-white stork, with sky-blue epaulet on each shoulder, which is to be found in the everglades. He was going to spend the whole summer alone in these regions, or only with Indian guides; and seemed cheerful and enthusiastic. He should find plenty of cocoanuts, and would never need to have a fever if he would eat daily of the wild oranges which abound. If one only could go in spirit, and not in flesh, one would like to follow him into the everglades. The tropical forests of Florida contain visions and wonders of growth and glory never yet revealed to the eye of the common traveller, and which he who sees must risk much to explore. Our best wishes go with our enthusiast. May he live to tell us what he sees!
