SHRUBBERY. 
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373 
SHRUBBERY. 
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given situation were to be treated | that have not sufficient room and au 
of, only some general directions can 
be given or principles laid down 
respecting the planting of the shrubs 
and trees. 
If we examine most of the shrub- 
beries in country residences, we 
shall find that there is a general | 
sameness in the appearance of the 
trees and shrubs with which they 
are planted, from one end of the 
shrubbery to the other. ‘This same- 
ness results from the mode com- 
monly employed of mixing those 
kinds of trees and shrubs that can 
be most readily procured indiscrimi- 
nately together. Some evergreens 
are distributed throughout the whole, 
such as a few Hollies, and a few 
Pines and Firs; Laurels, and with 
a few Roses, and perhaps a iew 
Honeysuckles. The rest is made 
up of the common mixture planted | 
by contractors or jobbing gardeners 
on such occasions. ‘The object is 
merely to produce a plantation 
which shall have some flowering 
shrubs in it, and some herbaceous 
plants and Roses. If we examine 
the progress of such a plantation 
from the time it has been planted 
till it has attaimed the age of twenty 
or thirty years, we shall that at 
the end of four or five years the 
herbaceous plants will become chok- 
ed up, and are either killed or ren- 
dered unsightly. In six years the 
Roses will have ceased to flower 
freely for want of light and air, and 
of manuring the soil; and hence 
they will have become the very 
reverse of ornamental. In ten 
years the finer shrubs will have 
been choked up by the coarser kinds, 
and in twenty years almost all the 
shrubs will have vanished, having 
been destroyed by the trees. There 
is no way of preventing this res 
to a shrubbery planted in the usual 
manner, except by constant thin- 
ning ; beginning in the third year, and 
removing all the oon plants 
3 
and light to grow and flower freely. 
The bulbs may be left as long as 
they will grow; because as they 
have but little foliage, and that feli- 
age is produced early and soon dies 
oif, they are, under no circum- 
stances, so disagreeable in their ap- 
pearance as dicotyledonous plants. 
The Roses should be removed when- 
ever they cease to flower vigorous- 
ly; and all the other shrubs should 
be thinned out when their branches 
begin to interfere with one another. 
Where the shrubbery is twenty or 
thirty feet wide, every shrub should 
be kept separate from every other 
shrub, so as to be clothed with 
branches from the ground upward; 
or the shrubs should be encouraged 
to grow in groups of different sizes, 
each group being kept more or less 
distinct from every other group. It 
may be thought that this mode of 
keeping the single plants and the 
groups distinct, will prevent the 
shrubbery from serving as a screen ; 
but this 1s a mistake; because 
though the plants, by being placed 
alternately, will admit the eye of 
the spectator on the walk to see in 
among them, which in passing 
along a walk adds greatly to the 
variety of its effect, yet this very 
circumstance will prevent the eye 
from passing the boundary. Any 
person may prove this by drawing 
circles representing the shrubs or 
groups on paper to a scale; and 
supposing the strip of plantation to 
be thirty feet in width; and the 
circles some of them to be five feet 
in diameter, and some of them ten 
feet. The style of planting and 
thinning so as to keep each plant 
distinct, and always about to touch 
but never actually touching those 
| around it, is what Mr. Loudon calls 
the gardenesque treatment of shrub. 
beries and plantations; and the 
style of grouping is called the 
picturesque mode of planting and 
