The Coral Gables Times

Wonderful things happen to your trees, shrubs and evergreens ... WHEN YOU USE SEYMOUR SMITH SNAP-CUT PRUNERS

Proper pruning at the right time is the key to beautiful shrubs and trees. These fast cutting anvil pruners are so light, so clean cutting, so easy to use you'll find yourself a pruning expert in no time. And for complete information on when and how to prune, send for the Snap-Cut "How-to-Prune" booklet. Pruning Shears from $1.39 to $3.25 Seymour Smith & Son, Inc. Oakville, Connecticut Here's my 25¢. Please send me a copy of your PRUNING HANDBOOK. Name Address City Zone State

Septic Tank-Cesspool Owners RID-X Can Save You Hundreds of Dollars!

Whether your home is new or old, you can have a costly, messy back-up in your septic tank or cesspool. RID-X® works to keep your sewage system operating smoothly. Helps prevent messy back-ups and foul odors. RID-X can save you HUNDREDS of dollars on digging, pumping, landscaping! EASY TO USE — just pour in toilet bowl and flush. That's all. RID-X can't harm porcelain, metal pipes, fittings. RID-X SEPTIC TANKS CESSPOOLS TROUBLE-FREE CAN SAVE COSTLY DIGGING-PUMPING-MOVING FREE ILLUSTRATED BOOKLET! 16 Fact-Filled Pages on Care and Maintenance of Septic Tanks, Cesspools. Send 10¢ for postage, handling to: Rid-X, P.O. Box 224, White Plains. N. Y.

Better Ways Lighting the landscape is more fun than ever — and

THIS SUMMER, more than ever before, you'll be able to enjoy your terrace and garden round the clock. By borrowing some of the techniques used to light and beautify public parks, lighting engineers have now also achieved remarkable results in private exterior decoration by night. Whether these new lighting plans are adapted to your own back lawn or to the 50 acres of a public park, they are providing more widespread and dramatic effects than anything we have had up to now. For instance: Few of the hundreds of visitors strolling through Queen Victoria Park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, last June 21 had ever seen the kind of beauty that suddenly enveloped them when the big electric switch was thrown. They had been walking in darkness relieved only by a few stars, the old post lamps along the walks, and the glow of the powerful floodlights playing on the falls in the distance. Then invisible lights flickered on and gradually increased in intensity, and in a moment the visitors found themselves in what appeared to be brightest moonlight. They could see other people walking far off. The towering trees became a luminous, soft-green canopy above them. Flowers were clothed in their own colors. The water of a quiet pond turned into a dark mirror sparkling with images of the surrounding foliage. The mile-long scene was a breath-taking example of what light, artistically used, can do to make our landscape as beautiful and usable at night as in the day. An increasing number of comparable small-scale examples can be found in gardens throughout North America. In Connecticut, a cousin of mine illuminates a granite cliff behind his house with four small floodlamps. On a dry spring night, the rock is a great grey bulwark spotted with a few flowers and evergreens. In an autumn rain, it glistens dark and phosphorescent where the lichens creep. In winter, the snow forms patterns in its fissures and along its craggy crown. In an Ohio garden an old apple tree bathed in soft light casts moving shadows on the lawn. The iris outside a Washington house gleam yellow and violet under the low, hooded light set behind them. A California flower border glows bright around the edges of an indistinct lawn, while near the terrace a small fountain sends streams of sparkling water toward the dark sky. LIGHTING THE LANDSCAPE is an old idea which has begun to catch on again in the past few years. No census of lighted gardens has been taken, but activity within the electrical industry reflects the growing public interest. For instance, in 1952 there were only five companies which made garden-lighting equipment; now there are dozens. One of the larger equipment manufacturers reports that its sales of fixtures for decorative lighting have risen more than 300 percent in the past three years, and it anticipates an even greater increase in the three years ahead. In many parts of the country, utilities have set up programs to help their customers plan landscape-illumination' systems. Why are these things happening? One obvious answer is the popularity of modern architecture, with its installation of picture windows and glass walls for indoor-outdoor living. Seen from inside a lighted room For lovely effects, use white

28 Suburbia Today, April 1962