The Canadian Horticulturist. 



401 



SHRUBBERIES. 



UR Canadian country homes are many of them deficient in 

 yard adornment. Too little attention is given to that 

 most important feature, a beautiful smooth shaven lawn, 

 which is able to give a charm even to the most ordinary 

 farm house. Indeed, the yard adornment is more impor- 

 tant than the architecture of the house ; if one has some 

 grand old elms, maples and spruces, with some clumps of 

 shrubs, so arranged as to hide boundaries, and objectionable 

 features, and to shade the part of the lawn required for use 

 in the sunny afternoons, the home will have an attraction 

 that nothing else can give it. The plain old fashioned house itself need not 

 trouble the owner, if, for want of means, he cannot replace it with a more expen- 

 sive one. He can plant about it shrubs to hide part of the foundation walls, 

 and the Japan Ivy, or the Virginia Creeper, to climb up the bare sides, and give 

 his chief attention to planning a beautiful and attractive yard. 



Aside from the lawn itself, it is often interesting to have on one side, a plot 

 of ground, devoted to flowers and shrubs of various kinds. A writer in Popular 

 Gardening, wrote some time ago, of such a collection, in the following terms : — 

 The shrubbery walk at Lyndale was never more satisfactory than this year. To 

 your recent readers let me explain that this is simply a portion of the outskirts 

 of our rear lawn, so planted with two irregular Rnes of shrubs as to leave a grace- 

 fully curved grass walk of varying width between the continuous masses of 

 shrubs. The bushes are seated on the grass at about three feet apart for dwarf 

 growers, and from this up to eight feet apart for the larger ones, the latter being 

 in the background. 



The reasons why this walk satisfies me so well are : First it cost no great 

 price, the shrubs having been bought mostly at from $3 to $5 per dozen, and I 

 planted them myself. Then the selection embraces such a variety as to leave 

 scarcely a week from April until November without some flowers, while to count 

 the handsome berries of some, and the rich autumn foliage of others, and then 

 some evergreens for winter, the walk is never without attraction. 



Last of all, there is something so distinct about a shrubbery walk from other 

 garden features. Here are verdure and size of growth that give character to the 

 garden only second to a grove of trees ; flowers that in beauty, fragrance and 

 quantity almost equal the flower borders themselves, while the care of all amounts 

 to almost nothing, embracing but the annual pruning and the winter protection 

 of some of the more tender kinds. 



