150 THE GARDENER. [April 



evergreen and flowering shrubs, showing that they are esteemed as be- 

 fitting objects with which to clothe the landscape with beauty, in a 

 measure to shelter from the storm, and to screen from the obtrusive 

 gaze of the passer-by. In this way, and for this purpose, millions of 

 shrubs are annually reared and disposed of at a comparatively cheap 

 rate : so much is this the case, that they are looked upon as the safest 

 of all hardy nursery stock. This fact must certainly be admitted, and 

 at first sight it seems to tell against the position taken up by the fore- 

 going remarks. But look again. While the ingenuity of garden pro- 

 prietors and gardeners has for many years been taxed to the utmost 

 to invent and introduce some new arrangement of tender and half- 

 hardy plants, to add some scarcely perceptible touch of improvement 

 to some ribbon border, or to alter the nibbling up of a border with 

 box patterns, and then rush into print to tell of their new thing, like 

 the Athenians of old, we seldom or never hear of anything new, im- 

 proved, or praiseworthy in the arrangement of our many beautiful 

 and more permanent though far less troublesome shrubs. 



Almost without an exception they are still to be found planted in 

 belts and lumpy clumps, and often pellmell, without much regard to 

 colour and outline. Too often they are allowed to grow into unmean- 

 ing thickets, merging their individual characters into a tangled mass ; 

 and in their struggle for existence the more robust and rapid growers 

 ultimately overpower and kill the weaker, and at last have to be hacked 

 down, in order that the survivors may have a chance of again growing 

 up into something like their natural forms and symmetry. We have 

 no intention of deprecating the introduction of large masses — even 

 dense and compact — of evergreens into extensive grounds, where such 

 are in unison with accompanying features, and when not left to show 

 nothing but a smooth surface, unrelieved of its painful monotony, 

 especially as such masses are nearly always composed of one or at 

 most two varieties of shrubs. But in any form such banks or surfaces 

 of evergreens are even more bearable than the neglected and mono- 

 tonous mixed shrubbery. At the same time, it would be as appropriate 

 to call a lawn a grass - garden as to call such lumps of monotonous 

 shrubs by the name of an evergreen-garden. Indeed, such arrange- 

 ments of shrubs and other appropriate accompaniments are seldom ever 

 met with in a style to warrant such a designation ; and it is because we 

 have the conviction that they are beyond all doubt well worthy of 

 being constituted into a garden capable of yielding a never-failing 

 source of enjoyment, that we are anxious to call special attention to 

 the fact. 



We have gardens set apart for Roses ; and although the Rose justly 

 lays claim to a regal position in Flora's court, a Rose-garden from Nov- 



