reader sees these beds in perfection in some of the parks and about
florists' establishments; he will understand at once that they are not
meant in any way to express the season, for the difference between them
in September and June is only that they may be more perfect in
September. The subtropical gardening (plates IV and V) is the planting
out of house-grown stuff, in order to produce given effects, of such
plants as palms, dracenas, crotons, caladiums, papyrus, together with
such luxuriant things as dahlias and cannas and large ornamental
grasses and castor beans; these plants are to produce effects quite
foreign to the expression of a northern landscape, and they are usually
at their best and are most luxuriant when overtaken by the fall frosts.

Now, the home gardener usually relies on plants that more or less come
and go with the seasons. He pieces out and extends the season, to be
sure; but a garden with pansies, pinks, sweet william, roses, sweet
peas, petunias, marigolds, salpiglossis, sweet sultan, poppies, zinnias,
asters, cosmos, and the rest, is a progress-of-the-season garden,
nevertheless; and if it is a garden of herbaceous perennials, it still
more completely expresses the time-of-year.

My reader will now consider, perhaps, whether he would have his garden
accent and heighten his natural year from spring to fall, or whether he
desires to thrust into his year a feeling of another order of
vegetation. Either is allowable; but the gardener should distinguish at
the outset.

I wish to suggest to my reader, also, that it is possible for the garden
to retain some interest even in the winter months. I sometimes question
whether it is altogether wise to clear out the old garden stems too
completely and too smoothly in the fall, and thereby obliterate every