WINTER- FURNISHING OF FLOWER BEDS. 115 



facts require that the gardener should always be on the alert, 

 and be jealous of even a live bud on the stock part of any- 

 thing, and still more so of a very strong sucker from the root. 

 It is never good for a plant, even if the plant be on its own 

 bottom, as it is called ; that is, rooted of itself, and growing 

 on its owm. root, instead of being grafted or budded. 



The larger flowering trees should, while yoimg and manage- 

 able, be pruned to some reasonable form, not clipped into 

 a ball, nor trimmed into a sugar-loaf ; but vigorous branches, 

 rambling out of place, so as to overbalance the tree, as it were, 

 or make it one-sided, should be shortened ; branches arising 

 where they are not wanted should be taken away altogether ; 

 a head that it is desirable to see broad should, if it show an in- 

 clination to run up, be shortened down to excite side growth ; 

 and a Kttle attention of this kind would be easily bestowed, 

 and well bestowed, after the trees have bloomed, so that the 

 new growth of all the trees shall be well directed. 



All flowering shrubs and trees are best pruned before the 

 spring growth commences, but after the bloOm is off, because 

 when a tree has completed its growth, we cannot touch it 

 without taking away bloom ; and it is as well to get all the 

 flower we can, and, when that is over, to use the knife. 



As it frequently happens that the borders and boundary 

 plantations are overrun with ill-grown trees and shrubs before 

 a gardener gets to them, he must do what he can towards 

 renovating them ; he must use the billhook freely, and cut 

 his way into them a little. K, as is often the case, some well 

 planted and well chosen selection of trees and shrubs have 

 iDeen neglected for years, the scarlet horse-chestnut may have 

 become a common one; the scarlet and double white and 

 scarlet cratsegiis may have turned to a common white or black 

 thorn ; the hybrid rhododendrons and azaleas become common 

 ponticums ; fine daphnes may have been matamorphosed by 

 time and neglect to the common spurge-laurel ; and the most 

 beautiful varieties of holly are merged into the commonest of 

 all the green ones ; and all this simply by the means we have 

 mentioned : the stock has grown, and being infinitely more 

 vigorous than the more delicate varieties worked on it, the 

 neglected growth has prevailed, and starved the worked por- 

 tion to death. Such is the constant struggle that nature 

 makes to assert her rights ; and she is only to be controlled 

 bv the constant remedy which we should all apply to growing 



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