The Banyan tree in the Company's Botanic garden, is a fine tree, but it
is of small dimensions compared with those of the trees just
mentioned.[125]
The cocoanut tree has a characteristically Oriental aspect and a natural
grace, but it is not well suited to the ornamental garden or the
princely villa. It is too suggestive of the rudest village scenery, and
perhaps also of utilitarian ideas of mere profit, as every poor man who
has half a dozen cocoanut trees on his ground disposes of the produce in
the bazar.
I would recommend my native friends to confine their clumps of plaintain
trees to the kitchen garden, for though the leaf of the plaintain is a
proud specimen of oriental foliage when it is first opened out to the
sun, it soon gets torn to shreds by the lightest breeze. The tattered
leaves then dry up and the whole of the tree presents the most beggarly
aspect imaginable. The stem is as ragged and untidy as the leaves.
The kitchen garden and the orchard should be in the rear of the house.
The former should not be too visible from the windows and the latter is
on many accounts better at the extremity of the grounds than close to
the house, as we too often find it. A native of high rank should keep as
much out of sight as possible every thing that would remind a visitor
that any portion of the ground was intended rather for pecuniary profit
than the immediate pleasure of the owner.
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