TIMELY TOPICS FOR THE AMATEUR— XVI, 



USE AND ABUSE OF FLOWERING SHRUBS. 



r-™'HERE is no class of plants that adds 

 more to the beauty of the lawn 

 and its surrounding's at this season 



^rJ of the year than flowering shrubs, 

 especially if the little care and attention 

 which they require, compared with other 

 plants, is taken into consideration. But 

 how seldom do we see anything- like a 

 really natural looking, nicely shaped speci- 

 men of these shrubs, with their long, 

 graceful, drooping racemes, or perhaps their 

 bold upright spikes of growth, laden down 

 or almost completely covered with their 

 beautiful buds and blossoms, as most of 

 them should be in their flowering season if 

 the plants have been properly cared for. 



Too often, however, instead of the wealth 

 of bud and blossom that these plants pro- 

 duce in such profusion, if only fairly well 

 treated, we see stubby, miserable shorn-and- 

 shaven looking specimens, clipped — not 

 pruned — into all sorts of ugly indescribable 

 shapes and forms, with perhaps a few of 

 their bright blossoms sprinkled here and 

 there on the stubs of young growth of the 

 preceding year, that the destructive clipping 

 shears had not been so severely used upon ; 

 or perhaps, in some cases, a few blossoms 

 may be seen scattered through the centre of 

 the shrub where the clipping shears did not 

 reach the young flower-producing growth. 



This annual clipping process, which usual- 

 ly takes place in July or August, when most 

 of the flowering shrubs have about completed 

 the season's growth, is, in the majority of 

 crses, responsible for the miserable looking 

 r/rologies for these plants so often seen on 

 !;.-.vns, and in small plots of flower-gardens, 

 at this season of the year. 



There are few flowering shrubs, excepting 

 perhaps tall or strong growing kinds, such 



as syringa (lilac), Cydonia japonica, Phila- 

 delphus (mock orange), and the tartarian 

 honeysuckle, etc., that cannot be effectively 

 pruned and thinned out when in flower, so 

 that the plants can be kept in sufficiently 

 good shape and condition, without having 

 recourse to the destructive system of clip- 

 ping so often resorted to. Even these strc/ng 

 growing varieties cannot endure the clipping 

 shears and give satisfactory flowering re- 

 sults as well. 



Weigelias, spireas, tamarisks, most var- 

 ieties of the deutzias, and even the more 

 straggling growing forsythias and other 

 dwarfer growing shrubs, should never have 

 the clipping shears applied to them at any 

 season of the year. 



Almost all flowering shrubs, with a few 

 exceptions, produce their wealth of blossom 

 on the growth made during the preceding- 

 summer. If this is clipped off as soon as 

 growth is completed, the result is disastrous 

 to the next season's crop of flowers. If 

 those, who have a plant or two on their lawns 

 of the shrubs mentioned, will only take notice 

 during the flowering season on what part of 

 the growth the flowers are produced, the 

 evil effects of this clipping process can 

 easily be understood. 



Varieties of the hydrangea such as H. 

 paniculata, H. japonica and the different var- 

 ieties of the shrubby hibiscus (althea) pro- 

 duce their flowers on wood of the same 

 season's growth. These shrubs should be 

 pruned back to within three or four buds of 

 the preceding year's growth, either late in 

 the fall or early in the spring. 



But with most of the other species and 

 varieties of shrubs before mentioned, almost 

 all the pruning they require can be done 

 whilst they are in flower. By cutting out 



