Care of Shrubs hi Lawn and !Door-yard. 239 



Care of Shrubs in Lawn and Door-yard. 



ROSES and shrubs are now much grown in suitably arranged masses or natural 

 groups, and that is the best way of keeping up a varied and varying show of all 

 their beauties, with least trouble. 



When they are grown as isolated plants in front yards, it is necessary to make them 

 " hold their heads up," and look trim and tidy. Every day we see examples of such 

 bushes tied up in compact bunches, with a stake to secure greater uprightness ; but 

 towards April it is common to see stake and all dangling helplessly over. Then 

 they are straightened by resetting the stake, and by cropping the disheveled tops 

 by barber-ous pruning shears or knife. 



This treatment is senseless. It directly defeats the main object, which we sup- 

 pose to be the securing of a plant of neat figure, robed in luxuriant leaves, and 

 brightened with well-expanded flowers. For it is obvious that not one of these 

 crowded shoots can open its leaves to the light, and as they were similarly suffocated 

 last summer, they have nothing laid up — no means or substance from which to 

 produce good flowers this year, even if there were room to display them. Next 

 summer they will, of course, be barren too, if the leaves are given "no room to 

 turn." 



But the bush will do somethings so long as it has roots safe and sound, and as it 

 can do nothing else well, it will go back to the primitive course of throwing up fresh 

 sprouts from the ground, thus adding to and aggravating the crowded condition above. 



The right treatment in such a case is to use a strong, narrow knife, or saw, or sharp 

 pointed pruning shears, such as French gardeners use, or a suitable chisel and mal- 

 let, and cut out all the old exhausted shoots, and all the young ones that are weak 

 or unripe, close at the surface wherever possible, or beneath it, for neatness sake, 

 leaving only those which have been first selected as the best and the best placed. 

 Separate these by tying or spreading, using a light hoop if necessary, to secure a well- 

 balanced and evenly distributed figure, with full room around each shoot for its flow- 

 ering branchlets and leaves, and full access of light and free air throughout. If a 

 stake seems needful, it will not look amiss, provided it is set erect and centrally, 

 even although it may be thick and tall. In that position it may be even taller than 

 the shoots. The shoots left to bloom should not be shortened further than to take 

 off ill-turned, unsymmetrical branchlets, or slender ones incapable of bloom. 



If this care is supplemented by a trifling attention, in May or June, to pinch out 

 the sprouts that will appear numerously then, leaving only the suitably placed few 

 that are wanted to fill vacancies, or to renew good blooming canes, according to the 

 nature of the plant, the fullest rewards of successful training will be attained. Some 

 plants make a rank growth from the tops in August or September, and in their case 

 a pinching of the ends of wild or wanton shoots is advisable. 



Climbing roses, raspberries, currants, gooseberries, etc., class under the above rule 

 of treatment. 



When shrubs are grouped in masses they are not tied up in any formal figure. 

 Pendant branchlets or low growing sorts placed in front of erect ones hide the stems, 

 and present to the sight only leaves and flowers, as in natural boscage. — Country 

 Gentleman. 



