CHAPTER I

WANT OF VARIETY A BLEMISH

There is a sad want of variety amongst evergreen and deciduous shrubs in the average English garden. Faith is placed in a few shrubs with a reputation for robbing the soil of its goodness and making a monotonous ugly green bank, neither pleasant to look at nor of any protective value. As one who knows shrubs well and the way to group them says, "Even the landscape gardeners, the men who have the making of gardens--with, of course, notable exceptions--do not seem to know the rich storehouse to draw from." Very true is this. We see evidence of it every day. The mixed shrubbery is fondly clung to as a place for all shrubs, whether flowering or otherwise, and the result is a thicket of growths, a case indeed of a survival of the fittest. There are other shrubs than Privet in this fair world of ours, and as for providing shelter, the wind whistles through its bare stems and creates a draught good for neither man, beast, nor plant. Of the cherry laurel again there is far too much in gardens. Few other plants can stand against its greedy, searching roots, and its vigorous branches and big leaves kill other leaf-growth near them. Grown in the proper way, that is, as an isolated shrub, with abundance of space to develop its graceful branches and brilliant green leaves, the Cherry Laurel is a beautiful evergreen; it is quite happy in shady, half-wooded places. But grown, as it is so often, jammed up and smothering other things, or held in bounds by a merciless and beauty-destroying knife, its presence has not been to the advantage of English gardening.

When the planting season comes round, think of some of the good shrubs not yet in the garden, and forget pontic Rhododendron, Laurel, Aucuba, and Privet. By this is not meant rare shrubs, such as may only be had from the few nurseries of the very highest rank or from those that make rare shrubs a speciality, but good things that may be grown in any garden and that appear in all good shrub catalogues.

Perhaps no beautiful and now well-known shrub is more neglected than beautiful _Exochorda grandiflora_ (the Pearl Bush). Its near relatives, the Spiræas, are in every shrubbery, but one may go through twenty and not see Exochorda. Even of the Spiræas one does not half often see enough of _S. Thunbergi_, a perfect milky way of little starry bloom in April and a most shapely little bush, or the double-flowered _S. prunifolia_, with its long wreaths of flower-like double thorn or minute white roses and its autumn bravery of scarlet foliage. The hardy Magnolias are not given the opportunity they deserve of making our gardens lovely in earliest summer. Who that has seen _Magnolia stellata_ in its April dress of profuse white bloom and its summer and autumn dignity of handsome though not large foliage, would endure to be without it? or who would not desire to have the fragrant chalices of _M. soulangeana_, with their outside staining of purple, and _M. conspicua_, of purest white in the early months of March and April? And why does not every garden hold one, at least, of the sweet _Chimonanthus_, offering, as it does in February, an abundance of its little blooms of a fragrance so rich and powerful that it can be scarcely matched throughout the year?

_Cassinia fulvida_, still known in nurseries by its older name of Diplopappus, in winter wears its fullest dress of tiny gold-backed leafage in long graceful sprays, that are borne in such profusion that they only beg to be cut to accompany the rare flowers of winter that we bring indoors to sweeten and enliven our rooms.

Of small-flowering trees none is lovelier than the Snowy Mespilus (_Amelanchier_), and for a tree of somewhat larger size the good garden form of the native Bird Cherry is beautiful in the early year. The North American _Halesia_ (the Snowdrop Tree) should be in every garden, either as a bush or tree, every branch hung in May with its full array of pendent bloom of the size and general shape of Snowdrops, only of a warm and almost creamy instead of a cold snow-white colour.

Few spring-flowering shrubs are more free and graceful than _Forsythia suspensa_, and if it can be planted on a slight eminence and encouraged to throw down its many-feet-long graceful sprays it then exhibits its best garden use. The Chinese _Viburnum plicatum_ is another shrub well known but unfairly neglected, flowering with the earliest Irises. Grouped with the grand _Iris pallida dalmatica_ it is a thing never to be forgotten.

_Æsculus (Pavia) parviflora_, blooming in July when flowering shrubs are rare, is easily grown and strikingly handsome, and yet how rarely seen! _Calycanthus floridus_, with its spice-scented blooms of low-toned crimson, also a late summer flower, is a fine thing in a cool, well-sheltered corner, where the sun cannot burn the flowers. The Rose Acacia (_Robinia hispida_), trained on a wall or house, is as beautiful as any Wistaria, and the quality of the low-toned rosy bloom of a much rarer colour. It is quite hardy, but so brittle that it needs close and careful wall training or other support. To name a few others in the same kind of category, but rather less hardy, the Sweet Bay is the noblest of evergreen bushes or small trees; the Tamarisk, with its grey plumes of foliage and summer flower-plumes of tenderest pink, is a delightful plant in our southern counties, doing especially well near the sea. _Clethra alnifolia_, against a wall or in the open, is a mass of flower in late summer, and the best of the _Hibiscus syriacus_, or _Althæa frutex_, the shrubbery representatives of Mallows and Hollyhocks, are autumn flowers of the best class. A bushy plant of half-woody character that may well be classed among shrubs, and that was beloved of our grandmothers, is _Leycesteria formosa_, a delightful thing in the later autumn. The large-fruited Euonymus (Spindle Tree) is another good thing too little grown.

For a peaty garden there are many delightful plants in the neglected though easy-to-be-had list. One of these is the beautiful and highly fragrant _Azalea occidentalis_, all the better that the flowers and leaves come together and that it is later than the Ghent Azaleas. Then there are the two sweet-scented North American Bog Myrtles, _Myrica cerifera_ and _Comptonia asplenifolia_, the charming little _Leiophyllum buxifolium_, of neatest bushy form, and the _Ledum palustre_, whose bruised leaves are of delightful aromatic fragrance; _Vaccinium pennsylvanicum_, pretty in leaf and flower and blazing scarlet in autumn, and _Gaultheria Shallon_, a most important sub-shrub, revelling in moist peat or any cool sandy soil.

These examples by no means exhaust the list of desirable shrubs that may be found for the slightest seeking. This brief recital of their names and qualities is only meant as a reminder that all these good things are close at hand, while many more are only waiting to be asked for.