i88i.] SHRUBBERIES. 313 



light of a portion of the garden, to be kept as tidy as possible through 

 a free use of the hoe, and sometimes of the rake. There are few things 

 which strike one so painfully on an estate as this matter of large 

 shrubs huddled together, and killing each other. There is no reason 

 whatever that it should be so : shrubs are not like a forest of trees 

 grown to produce the greatest amount of saleable produce in a given 

 amount of space ; shrubs are grown either as blinds or screens, or as 

 features of ornament, and one and all of these ends can be fully 

 gained without working on the rough-and-ready principle, which has 

 nothing to recommend it other than covering bare soil quickly in the 

 first place. But here again there is no reason for shrubs to grow in a 

 bed of bare soil. Where thorough preparation of the soil is necessary, 

 by all means let it be made, but not to the length of making and 

 keeping the shrubbery like a small nursery. After shrubs have once 

 got a grip of the soil, they flourish quite as well with ground covered 

 with grass round them and kept mown, as they do when growing in 

 a bed of bare soil. But these matters apart, the principle of crowding 

 shrubs together is not a good one. In old places where this system 

 has been in practice for many years, and where shrubs are grown 

 closely together, change is not easy ; but wherever alterations are in 

 progress, or new grounds are being laid down, there is an opening for 

 something better for the shrubs. Shrubs are not treated with sufficient 

 breadth ; they are tolerated, as it were, as necessary evils, so much space 

 being marked out for them in certain positions, without thinking of the 

 ultimate effects. They are huddled into corners as blinds, and dibbled 

 together in lines or groups as screens, in as little space as possible, to 

 get them to do well for a few years. The ground for shrubs is as 

 niggardly dealt out in policies of tens or hundreds of acres, as if the 

 whole belongings of the place were included in units. Why should 

 this be ? Surely a shrub, healthy and well developed, is in itself an 

 object of beauty, as much as is a tree or a tiny flower. Why, then, 

 not allow more space to our shrubberies, more room to our individual 

 shrubs, dotting them, as it were, in groups of single specimens on 

 lawns, with grass underneath and around them, and space sufiicient 

 when well grown to allow us to walk in and out amongst them ? and 

 with shrubs as blinds it only amounts to granting a little more space, 

 so that they may not be crushed up against buildings or walls, but 

 allowed sufficient room to develop naturally. There is also this prac- 

 tice to be noted, of planting valuable Coniferse amongst the commoner 

 shrubs. In all such cases, unless the shrubs are entirely cleared out and 

 the Conifers left, this practice means certain destruction to these. 

 Then there is another practice which cannot be recommended, the 

 mixing of dwarf-growing shrubs with those of coarse and quick-grow- 

 ing habit. This is just as bad in its way as the last-mentioned. 

 These refined little fellows should have places by themselves, just as 

 we try to keep our dwarf-growing flowers from getting overgrown by 



