694 GARDEN MANAGEMENT. 



operation is well performed, the loss will not average more than from five to 

 eight per cent. The principle involved in all planting is the same, and only of 

 secondary importance to securing as many healthy roots as possible. I place 

 the stability or immovability of both root and top afterwards. When it is 

 otherwise, every breeze that blows is analogous to a fresh removal. No sooner 

 do the roots gi-asp hold of the soil than they are forcibly wrenched out of it 

 again, and the plant lives, if at all, as if by miracle. The planting of young 

 trees and small shrubs is so simple as scarcely to require instructions. 

 Always make the hole considerably larger than the space required by the 

 roots, whether few or many, so that they may find soft recently-moved soil to 

 grow in ; and yet the soil must not be left too loose. If so moist as not to 

 need watering, which will moisten and also consolidate the soil, it may be 

 gently trodden down round the roots. 



2180. In reference to the proper distance at which shrubs should be planted, 

 much depends upon the object in view. A safe rule, however, is to plant thick, 

 and thin quickly ; from three to four feet is a good average for small shrubs and 

 trees. In three years, two out of three plants should be removed ; and in 

 planting it is well to introduce rapid-growing common things amongst choice 

 plants, to nurse them up ; only the nursing must not continue too long, nor the 

 nurses pennanently establish themselves to the injury of the children. This 

 is too often the case, and nearly every shrubbery I have seen has suffered 

 more or less to a ruinous extent from this cause. But if the mere operation 

 and distance of planting is important, the mode of arrangement is still more 

 so. Nothing can well be more unsatisfactory than the present style, which 

 may be called the doting system. Perhaps a dozen varieties of shrubs are 

 planted haphazard all over an acre or two of ground. The only principle 

 kept in view is that, strong or weak, they shall be planted at intervals of the 

 same distance. The result is a dreary monotonous maze of tiresome same- 

 ness. Whatever the form or extent of shrubbery, lay it down as a first 

 principle that it shall be planted in distinct groups, and in masses of shrubs 

 or trees. Single plants, at such distances as to allow them fully to develop 

 their characteristics, are desirable as specimens, and as a necessary and 

 pleasing accompaniment of the gardenesque style ; but a shrubbery should 

 be a mass of shrubs, not a congeries of single specimens, however perfect ; 

 far less must it be a higgledy-piggledy patch of imperfect plants. Plant every 

 thing in groups. Is your shrubbery of serpentine form ? — Let every separate 

 sweep, as far as practicable, have its specific furnishing. Put vai'iegated 

 holly in that prominence, berberries in that recess ; green yew here, golden 

 yonder ; Portugal laurel in this, the next box ; beyond them, common laurel, 

 rhododendrons, arbutuses, junipers, kalmias, azaleas, and heaths, all in their 

 turn ; the same with deciduous shrubs, which might generally be introduced 

 behind the evergreens ; lilacs here, deutzias there ; — philadelphases, spiraeas, 

 ribes, and laburnums, — all in groups. 



2181. Is your shrubbery straight ? — Plant a ribbon border of shrubs, thus : 

 dwarf laburnums, tall standard lilacs, white syringas or deutzias, yews, 

 variegated hollies, box, dwarf golden yews, rhododendrons ; and, next to the 



