CHAPTER XIV 

 ACCENT AND SPECIMEN TREES AND SHRUBS 



There are two kinds of specimen plants, those which are used as 

 single specimens, with full space allowed for their normal development, 

 and those which are used as accent plants in masses of border planting, 

 because, as such, on account of their flowering and foliage habits, they 

 lend a definite touch of interest to the plantation. 



The various plants included in this group are those which have 

 a normal symmetrical habit of growth, or those which can easily be 

 kept in a neat, symmetrical outline. In order fully to understand the 

 difference between specimen trees and shrubs, and trees and shrubs 

 for border plantings in groups, the reader should first know that many 

 of our trees and shrubs are not adapted to so-called "mass plantings." 

 Under the crowded condition of mass plantings these trees and shrubs 

 do not produce any of their interesting characteristics of flowers and 

 general outline. Much dead growth becomes evident on account of the 

 exclusion of light and air necessary for their proper development. It 

 is necessary to examine but a few plantations further to know that 

 many trees and shrubs most interesting when used as individual 

 specimens or as groups of two or three plants make a most uninterest- 

 ing group when massed in quantity. 



In general it may be said that specimen piants are used as such 

 because of their fruiting habit, flowering habit, interesting outline, or 

 general foliage effect, which is evidenced at its best when the material 

 is planted as individual specimens. 



So-called specimen plants in this group are often used as accent 

 plants in the larger and massed plantations, because of the quality of 

 the flowers, the colour of the foliage, the habit of their growth, or 

 the texture and colour of twigs. Many specimen plants can be used to 

 good advantage scattered here and there in the border plantations to 

 emphasize one or more of these interesting characteristics, and they 

 sometimes are even more effectively used in this way as accent plants 

 than as specimen plants on the lawn. 



Whenever material is selected as specimen material it should be 



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