CHAPTER VI I I. 



MATERIALS USED IN DECORATIVE PLANTING. 



THERE are no vegetable productions in Nature which, 

 when thoroughly observed and understood, are not beau- 

 tiful. Few plants are more beautiful than the thistle. 

 Most weeds will elicit our admiration if their forms, 

 growth, and structure are carefully noticed. Even bare rocks give 

 pleasure to the eye, and their vastness and ruggedness awaken emo- 

 tions of sublimity, as sun, moon, or darkness light and shadow them. 

 A lightning-shivered pine, projecting from a mountain side, makes 

 a striking point in a painter's landscape, and serves to heighten, by 

 contrast, the smooth-featured loveliness of a valley below it. 



Yet the thistle would give more pain than pleasure as a pot or 

 border plant. What we call weeds are only so because some other 

 plants unite more beauties, or give more pleasurable returns for cul- 

 tivation. We reject the former, because we cannot have all, and 

 therefore choose their betters. The shivered pine, though pleas- 

 ingly picturesque up among the rocks, would give more pleasure 

 added to the wood-pile than to the front yard of the citizen j and 



