2i8 The Canadian Horticulturist. 



WHAT SHALL WE PLANT? 



^^HEN a man begins to plant his home-grounds, with the primary 

 aim of making a consistent picture of the whole, or, if he is wiser 

 still, and designs his house and its surroundings together so that 

 they make one inseparable composition, he should select every tree 

 and shrub and herb, not for its individual decorative qualities, but 

 for its value in helping to realize and express the ideal house-scene 

 which he has mentally created. His fences, his walks and lines of 

 approach, his stretches of grass, the masses of verdure which connect his house- 

 foundations with the grounds, are all features of one scene, and they are all so 

 related to each other that we should not consider the attractiveness of single 

 elements apart from the rest, but should Estimate their value as they help to 

 round out the symmetry and beauty of the whole. To create a good house" 

 scene is the work of a real artist, and artists of the first rank are rare in every 

 profession, more rare, perhaps, in landscape-gardening than in any other of the 

 arts of design. 



But men may plant with pleasure and intelligence even when they have not 

 this high creative faculty. To secure a collection of shrubs chosen for striking 

 habit, or profuse flowering, or because they are curious and rare, or simply because 

 they are vegetable anomalies, whose merit consists in blanched or spotted or 

 highly colored foliage, may not be an unworthy ambition. And since the col- 

 lector's regard is for individual plants, he is not to be criticized if in his arrange- 

 ment of them his only aim is to show each one to the best advantage, without 

 any regard to the effect which they produce when taken together. It is safe to 

 say, however, that anyone fails to get the highest possible enjoyment out o^ 

 horticulture unless he recognizes some definite system under which he selects 

 and arranges his plants. If he is interested in them simply because they are odd 

 or novel, he should not delude himself with the belief that he loves them for their 

 beauty. He may obtain keener enjoyment from vegetable freaks and curiosities 

 than from plants which are simply beautiful, and if this is so no one has a right 

 to protest against the indulgence of such a passion. The people who live next 

 door to him may regret his inclination, but their case is not so hard as it would 

 be if he chose to build a house which was eccentric or conspicuously ugly. A 

 great deal of intelligent and not unprofitable pleasure can be derived from a 

 garden filled entirely with rare or abnormal plants, although they would be much 

 less beautiful than the common plants in ordinary gardens. But in this case, 

 too, the man who has a paramount love for oddities should recognize it as such, 

 and he should not try to persuade himself or his neighbors that his museum is 

 filled with objects of beauty, or that his treasures have more value than theirs. 

 — Garden and Forest. 



