Plant-stands for halls are very favorite decorations nowadays; but, of course, the plants must be hardy, as they will be subject to sudden changes of temperature. One lady made a fine effect by cultivating young pine-trees, spruces, and firs in the large stone jars of her hall. Cocoanut palms or India-rubber plants are the favorite exotics. Hardy ferns group in well for these hall plant-stands. In the bottom of each jar should be placed some broken pottery, for drainage, placed so that the moisture will drain down through the fragments without the soil choking the jar. Over the potsherds a little cocoanut moss should be placed, and then a mixture of leaf-mold, rotten turf and peat, and glass-maker’s sand, to keep the whole porous. On the surface of the pots and between them should be put wood moss, as in the case of stands for sitting-rooms. A common seed-pan, filled with selaginalla denticulata dropped into a small vase, has a fine effect; long sprays grow out over the sides of the vase and drop down eight to ten inches.
In an ordinary apartment, where the window-sills are not wide enough to hold flower-pots, the plan of wire stands is an admirable one for the window gardener. A piece of oil-cloth under the stand catches all the drippings, and a servant-girl with a wiping-towel can clean up all the débris. Soft-wooded plants and those with soft leaves should be arranged as near the window as possible; and if rearranged and turned against the light often, so much the better. Hard-leaved plants, like ivy and the India-rubber plant, may be put anywhere away from the light. But most plants need light before anything. The yucca quadricolor, so much used in the decorative house-jars or vases, becomes beautifully tinted with crimson if it has enough light. Now, if a lady has not room for many rustic jardinières and ornamental flower-stands in her room, she can have zinc-pans and pots, neatly enameled and painted, set on the floor, in which her larger plants may be put out, This is a very good idea for grouping; for she thus produces in her tout ensemble some of the wild confusion and grace of Nature.
A climbing rose should go scattering itself over an imperceptible wire trellis. A geranium should steadily blossom beneath. A group of yucca, agave, dracæna, Jerusalem cherry, should form a distinct and effective grouping below. And then beautiful trailing plants should drop from hanging baskets, and from every “coigne of vantage.” Ivy grows well in the shade, and may be employed for trailing around sofas, couches, tête-à-tête chairs, and picture-frames. Ladies sometimes tie a bottle of water behind a picture-frame, and allow the long shoots of nasturtion to grow out as if from the wall. The effect is startling. Mirrors are often cunningly placed behind a flowering plant which is growing in a hanging basket against the wall, thus doubling the effect.
As the days grow shorter, and the winter threatens to come upon us apace, we are always tempted to bring in from the garden the flowers that we think will last. Just before the fatal frosts, roots of mignonette should be planted in pots and put in a dark closet for a few days, where the plant takes root and accommodates itself to its change of base. It will make a room sweet all winter.
A lady can make all sorts of ornamental flower-pot coverings, and herself arrange pretty leather and paper standard covers for the ugly but useful flower-pot of commerce; or she can buy at most country potteries some very artistic flower-pots—also useful. And to put red, green, and blue glass tubes for hyacinths among these gives her window a very pretty effect. The very study of color in these minor matters adds much to her window garden. It is lucky for all lovers of beauty that beauty is now cheap. Art is putting her slender foot down everywhere; and it is almost possible, in a remote country village, to get the delicate classic shapes in cheap pottery which the cultivated Greeks imagined three thousand years ago.
For internal decoration by means of cut flowers, it seems almost absurd to attempt to delineate the proper thing to do; for, if a lady has taste, she will know without being told. But some few hints may not appear impertinent.
For the breakfast-table and dinner-table fresh flowers are almost indispensable. The pretty, cheap, and useful combinations of glass and silver, of china and pottery, which are made to hold flowers, are innumerable. Select a high vase, and fill it every day with fresh grasses, a few daisies, or some graceful ferns combined with white lilies, and you have always a superb center-piece.
For the summer, a large lump of ice covered with flowers, in a silver or glass dish, is delightfully refreshing. It also keeps away the flies. In grand party decorations ice is now freely used, and if some way can be devised to get the refuse water out of the way, it will be always a good thing for a country party or at a grand fête at Newport. For great blocks of ice covered with vines and flowers, lighted from behind, have a splendid effect. They cool the air and keep all the flowers fresh. Flowers, when cut, demand coolness; and the effect of the white crystal column is always beautiful.
Some ladies have a large tub put in the corner of the room, and the pyramid of ice placed in that. Then the tub can be masked by moss, branches of trees, evergreen, or any floral device, and the ice is draped with garlands. At a fête at Newport, in 1879, this ice decoration was much admired. At a ball given by the Prince of Wales to the Czarina of Russia in the large conservatory of the Royal Horticultural Society of South Kensington, ten tons of ice were used to build an ornamental rockery. This was draped with drooping ferns and graceful vines, and was surrounded with crimson baize and lighted from behind.