258 FLOWERS AND BEDDING PLANTS, 



The common firs are often planted to form centres for such beds, 

 but they soon grow to such over-shadowing size as to be quite un- 

 suitable. The weeping silver fir, and weeping Norway spruce, 

 however, are pendulous to such a degree that they make but slow 

 additions to their breadth. If their central stems or leaders are 

 kept vertical by tying to a stake or straight twig bound to the stem 

 below, and the side branches trimmed back whenever they show a 

 tendency to the normal form, the appearance shown in the cut may 

 be preserved for many years. Where these varieties of the fir are 

 not to be had, the Irish juniper, or the hemlock, may be substituted. 

 The former of those trees is almost monumental in its slender 

 formality, but is pleasing in color and delicate foliage. The latter, 

 if trimmed back every spring in April or May, but not afterwards 

 during that season, will exhibit during the rest of the year the most 

 airy outline of pendulous spray. The trimming in the spring must 

 not be done so as to leave a solidly conical hedge-like form, but 

 with some irregularity, imitating within slender limits the freedom 

 of outline natural to the hemlock ; the idea being to produce by 

 artificial means the appearance of one of nature's abnormal varieties 

 or sports, which will bear the same relation to the common form 

 of the hemlock that the pendulous fir in the cut bears to its family. 

 The last cut of this chapter, already alluded to, is a form of 



