EVERGREEN TREES AND SHRUBS. 235 



ever be seen in a garden. The true beauty of the Pine comes 

 from its form and dignity, as we see it in old Firs that clothe the 

 hills of Scotland, California, or Switzerland. It is not in distortion 

 or in little green pincushions we must look for the charm of the 

 Pine, but rather in storm-tossed head and often naked stems; and 

 hence all these ridiculous forms should be excluded from gardens 

 of any pretence to beauty. 



Another most unfortunate tree in this way, as helping to fill out 

 gardens with graceless things, is the western Arbor vitae (Thuja 

 occidentalis). This, which is a very hardy tree but never a dignified 

 one, even where it grows in the north about Lake Superior and 

 through the Canadas, is, unhappily, also hardy in our gardens, and 

 we may see in one catalogue no less than twenty-three forms of this 

 tree all dignified with Latin names. There are plenty of beautiful 

 things, new and old, worthy of the name, without filling our gardens 

 with such monstrosities, many of which are variegated. Of all ugly 

 things, nothing is worse than the variegated Conifer, which usually 

 perishes as soon as its variegated parts die, the half dead tree often 

 seeming a bush full of wisps of hay. 



In many once well-planted pleasure grounds the Pontic Rhodo- 

 dendron almost runs over and destroys every other shrub, and 

 hides out the most beautiful tree effects, growing 

 Evergreen weeds, often a little above the line of sight. Even where 

 people have taken the greatest trouble to plant a 

 good collection of trees, the monotony of it, always the same in 

 colour, winter or summer, except when dashed by its ill-coloured 

 flowers, is depressing. The walk from the ruins at Cowdray to the 

 new house is .an example that might be mentioned amongst a 

 thousand others of a noble bank of trees, varied and full of beauty, 

 but, in consequence of this shrub spreading beneath them all along 

 the walk, showing nothing but a dank wall of evergreen. This 

 ugliness and monotony come about through the use of the Pontic 

 as a covert plant, and also owing to its facility of growth the beauti- 

 ful sorts of Rhododendron being usually grafted on it. In a garden 

 where there are men to look after plants so grafted and pull away 

 the suckers, this plan may do, but when planting is done in a bold 

 way about woods, or even pleasure grounds, this is not nor can it 

 always be attended to, so that the suckers come up and in time 

 destroy the valuable sorts. The final result is never half so pretty 

 as in the most ill-kept natural wood, with Bracken and Brier in fine 

 colour and some little variety of form below the trees ; therefore 

 everybody who cares for the beauty of undergrowth should cease 

 this covering of the ground with this poor shrub, not so hardy as the 

 splendid kinds of American origin often grafted on it to die. With 



