CHAPTER XIII 

 Winter and the Garden 



THE garden should be, always, a delightful place, "a very- 

 pleasant spot," according to the old definition of the 

 word. Yet this is just what it so often is not, in winter — 

 not because of the winter, but because of our way of meeting the 

 winter. The forlorn dejection of rose bushes, trussed up in 

 straw until they look like tombstones, is too woeful a sight for 

 even the stoutest hearted to behold unmoved. Rhododendrons 

 enclosed with chicken- wire, with a litter of autumn leaves 

 covering them and filling their disreputable cages, are a distress- 

 ing and ignominious transformation from the summer's royal 

 splendor. And all the other homesick little things that are shut 

 up in dark box or barrel prisons — how their loneliness and dreari- 

 ness penetrates! It is more chill than winter wind. 



All shrubs are of course hardy in their native clime; therefore 

 the simplest way out of the question of winter protection of 

 plants is to evade it altogether by using only native species. 

 These will not need protecting. However, it is useless to counsel 

 such restraint as this, I know; no one will practice it, for there 

 are too many lovely things that grow in kindlier climes than ours 

 and yet that may be grown here, " with winter protection, ' ' for us 

 to resist. The next best thing therefore is to find a way of giving 

 this protection with the least possible offense to the eye. 



(135) 



