OF SHRUBS AND THEIR PLACING 5 
rock-garden. If your space is small, exclude them alto- 
gether, would be my precept; otherwise a bank of 
Japanese Maples may be allowed in the middle distance, 
but very great care must always be taken, whatever 
deciduous shrubs you employ, and wherever you plant 
them, absolutely to ignore them in the permanent scheme 
of the garden, to place no reliance on them as features 
in the design, no matter how lovely they may be while in 
flower. Nevertheless the fact of their loveliness in flower 
introduces a complicating factor. You cannot do with- 
out them; and yet, for three-quarters of the year you 
have to be doing without them. And thus I arrive at 
my conclusion; they must be so cunningly placed that 
while in flower they strike forcibly, proportionately on 
the eye; and yet, when out of flower, usurp no prominent 
place with their barrenness and decay, but fall naturally 
into the background of the picture. And thus all points 
in the foreground must be closed against deciduous shrubs. 
They must alternate, up at the back, with evergreens, so 
that the fall of their blossom means no loss. And, as 
salient features in the scheme of the rock-garden, they 
have no possibilities, and must resolutely be refused. 
There is one exception, though, to this rule. And I 
make it with reference to a thing which is less a shrub, 
indeed, than incarnate beauty itself. Paeconia Moutan can 
never be out of place on the rock-work (granted space, of 
course). And yet the Tree-Paeony blooms for but a 
short while, is leggy and gawky through the winter, leaden 
and dull through the autumn. But, during the flaring 
hours of its glory, it so holds the garden spellbound that 
no sacrifice is too heavy to make for its presence. I 
speak by book. Our masters, the Chinese, allow to 
Paeonia Moutan a supremacy in the rock-garden which 
they concede to no other flower. Remember how 
its beauty is made to crown the horror of that brilliant, 
