Down in my low land which fronts on the bay is a strip of the wettest and blackest muck varying from twenty-five to forty feet wide and a hundred and fifty feet long and lying at the base of the high, rocky hammock. At its southeastern border is an artificial pool and along the northeastern part is a tract of slightly elevated marl. In this whole area is a dense growth of tangled, scrubby vegetation; Yaupon (Ilex cassine), Wax Myrtle (Myrica cerifera), two kinds of Pond Apple. (Annona), Persimmon (Dios-pyros virginiana), a couple of willows, Wild Rubber (Ficus), Red Bay (Persea), Button Bush (Cephalanthus), and Button-wood (Conocarpus), the latter being a strange tree which, although upright in growth when young, almost always falls over when it has acquired age. In one place there is a large clump of swamp magnolias (Magnolia glauca), and there is quite a growth of large saw palmetto here and there. The axils of the leaves of this palm are admirable places for sword and other ferns and the irregular cavities in the trunks of the buttonwoods prove equally good for this purpose. On the floor of the swamp were masses of royal ferns (Osmunda spectabilis), which is distributed over all the eastern United States and probably is found in Europe. There were also a few clumps of the great Acrostichums (A. aureum and A. lomarioides), which are the largest ferns in our country. On the trees and shrubs were a few epiphytic orchids and quite a number of air pines (Tillandsias).

It was a wild, secluded place, shut away from the rest of the grounds, and so thickly grown up that it was difficult to enter it. It was pretty, but it seemed to me that I could improve a little on nature or rather help her out a little. There are few naturally beautiful effects of landscape gardening that nature does not sometimes produce; man can create many of these effects on a limited space and that was what I wanted to do; I was going to try to condense a little.

I first made an irregular walk of broken rock, leading it around to the most interesting places and this I covered with palmetto leaves and other rubbish so that no one would suppose that a walk had ever been made. If one cannot obtain rock for such a purpose sand mixed with a little marl or even swamp earth will answer; enough of the latter to bind the whole together but not make it muddy.

Then I dragged in rotten logs from the woods and scattered them around so as to look natural. This was a difficult task as they could neither be wheeled nor hauled in on account of the thickness of the scrub and the soft bottom. Years before a former owner of the land had chopped down the original forest and some of the old logs lay there, in many cases partly covered with sword ferns and Blechnums. These and the epiphytes on the trees gave me my cue.

I brought in quantities of sword ferns (Nephrolepis exaltata and N. biserrata) from the hammocks and planted them on the decaying logs, also in the axils of the saw palmetto leaves, while in cavities of the reclining buttonwoods and on slightly elevated tussocks of earth N. cordifolia, a species much like exaltata but bearing tubers on the root stalks, was also used. It sprawls along the stems of trees, throwing out new plants at short intervals. The lovely native resurrection fern (Polypodium poly-podioides) was successfully introduced. This creeps along the stems of certain hardwood trees in the hammocks, drying out and turning brown in dry weather but becoming fresh and resuming growth whenever a quarter of an inch of rain falls.

There are not less than ten species of epiphytal orchids growing in this general region, and these with as many more kinds of wild pines (Tillandsias, Guzmannias and Catopsis) were brought in, tied fast to trees and, with a little watering occasionally, were soon established.

The beautiful Tongue Fern (Campyloneuron phylliditis) was easily made to grow on decaying logs in such situations and on large tussocks the magnificent Asplenium serratum was found to do well. This fern has long, rather broad, entire fronds of a rich, glossy green, and these form a splendid crown that is worthy of a king.

More Acrostichums, Osmundas and Blechnums were brought in and planted in the mud, also Crinum americanum and Hymen-ocallis and several species of native herbaceous bog plants. An exceedingly delicate vine with compound leaves which clings by tendrils (Ampelopsis arborea) grows occasionally in our low lands and is very beautiful. This I planted in this wild garden with the common woodbine which is equally at home in dry or wet land. Sambucus intermedia, a wild elderberry with handsome heads of white flowers, grows in swampy places and this, too, was introduced here.

At the north end of the garden I have planted a number of cultivated things including some hothouse orchids, Bromeliads, Aroids and some of the staghorn ferns. Phalanopsis schilleriana and P. amabilis, two of the lovely Moth Orchids from the Philippines, are growing wonderfully here and bloom gloriously every winter. And there are Cattleyas, Dendrobiums, Brassias, Epi-dendrums and Oncidiums nearly all of which are doing well in the moist atmosphere of the swamp.

Throughout the greater part of this tract I have put out only native plants such as were already growing in it or would naturally flourish in such a place and they are in consequence perfectly at home. Not a thing that the average visitor sees would indicate that the place had ever been touched by the hand or planned by the brain of man. It is just as it would be if Nature had planted it and tended it as only she could. There is, however, a fly in the ointment. The great blue West Indian land crabs seem to know that nature has not planted this spot and they have migrated to it in numbers, bent on destruction. Many of the ferns and other plants on or near the ground have either been destroyed or roughly handled by them. I have tried in vain to keep them down with poison.

I have not written this chapter nor the one on fern pools for the purpose of giving instruction but rather in the way of suggestion. There are many in Florida who have homes or who are planning to have them where there are bits of waste land, dense thickets, swamps or sink holes which are little better than eyesores as they are. The ordinary way of proceeding is to clear them, drain or fill up, often at considerable expense, and when this is done they add but little to the beauty of a place.

It seems to me that it would be much better carefully to study such situations with a view to beautifying them in some such natural, simple and inexpensive way as has been applied to this little piece of useless, out-of-the-way swamp.