CHAPTER X 



FLOWERING TREES AND SHRUBS 



THE majority of English gardeners are slow to recognise 

 the value of the various flowering shrubs as an aid to 

 the carrying out of design. Our gardens, as a whole, 

 are far too sombre, a result of planting extensively with 

 dark, close growing evergreens, which keep out the 

 light, and reduce our pleasure grounds to the verge of 

 monotony. Evergreens are well enough in their way, 

 and in certain instances form valuable screens to unsightly 

 corners at all times of the year. But their use has been 

 overdone, and by their presence they are crowding out 

 a host of beautiful subjects, graceful and varied in their 

 mode of growth, and productive, also, of that most 

 needed element in our often saddening atmosphere 

 colour. Small gardens, especially, can ill afford to be 

 overplanted with laurel and privet, a form of encroach- 

 ment to which they are particularly liable. The majority 

 of evergreens are greedy feeders, and their hungry roots 

 travel in all directions, impoverishing the soil in the beds 

 and borders, which, owing to lack of space, have to be 

 formed in their near vicinity. The prejudice which exists 

 against deciduous trees is in reality quite unfounded, as 

 anyone must realise who has taken the trouble to examine 

 the structural beauty of trees which shed their leaves. 

 The exquisite tints of autumn, the gradual revealing of 

 hidden beauties in bark and stem as the summer mantle 

 is discarded, are sights we look for in vain in evergreens. 

 Summer and winter they hardly vary, and gardens in 



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