1 87 1.] A PLEA FOR SHRUB GARDENS. 151 



ember till April is about the most ungainly-looking garden that can 

 be imagined. We have parterre-gardens, with their unsurpassed bold- 

 ness of effect, for four months of the twelve. We have our gardens 

 for spring bulbs and other spring flowers, with all their charms and 

 buoyant effect upon the mind. We have our herbaceous borders, 

 which for half the year present little else than bare earth and labels. 

 All these we have, and can scarcely afford to neglect any one of them, 

 without creating an undesirable blank. Eut where shall we look for 

 our shrub or evergreen gardens 1 True, we occasionally meet with 

 grass plots in which are planted here and there a few shrubs, surrounded 

 with a ring of bare earth, and, in botanic gardens, decorated with an 

 ungainly label. Under such circumstances, each specimen assumes its 

 natural form, and is tolerably perfect ; but their arrangement can 

 scarcely be called even a step towards an ideal of a shrub-garden, nor 

 does it bear any trace of the thought exercised in the disposition of 

 other classes of plants of much less value, and of much more ephemeral 

 character. 



We have long been under the impression, that to devote a space in 

 garden-grounds to an evergreen or shrub garden, now that we have so 

 many and such varied plants with which to furnish it, would be to add 

 a most desirable and interesting feature. And if half the thought in 

 laying it out and in planting it were exercised that has been bestowed 

 on tracing out figures and scrolls on grass, and in planting them with 

 shortlived flowering -plants, we cannot be far wrong in saying that 

 something most pleasing and desirable would be the result. It is not 

 our intention at present to enter into what we may consider the chief 

 details of such a garden. Locality, soil, and the contour of the grounds 

 at various places, would, as in other gardens, have to determine the 

 more minute details of the shrub or evergreen garden. But just by 

 way of indicating what we are anxious should become more popular 

 than it is, let us suppose for instance that we have before us — what 

 is very common — a flower-garden in a sunken panel, surrounded 

 with sloping banks of grass, and in some cases banks clothed thickly 

 with the Portugal and common Laurels. These banks are as even and 

 smooth in surface as a well-trained eye and a deft knife, or a pair of 

 shears, can make them ; the enclosed design is on as level a surface as 

 lines and levels can make it ; and the walks and figures are all that 

 compass and square can produce in formality and uniformity. The 

 planting is as much unrelieved as are the sloping banks of grass or 

 tortured evergreens. If this were transformed into an evergreen 

 garden, we would depart from these principles of construction and 

 planting as much as such a piece of ground would allow. If the sur- 

 rounding banks were formally clothed with dwarf shrubs, it would be 



