236 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



the Cherry Laurel and the Portugal Laurel it is the main cause of the 

 monotony and cheerless air of so many pleasure grounds. 



The nurseryman who grows rare trees or shrubs very often finds 

 them left on his hands, so that many nurseries only grow a few 

 stereotyped things, mainly those that grow freely, and, owing 

 to the over-use of weed-evergreens like Privet, are without beauty, 

 and offensive in odour when in flower. The presence of such 

 things is one of the causes of the miserable aspect of the shrub- 

 beries in many gardens, which might be very beautiful and 

 interesting with a varied life. Many shrubs of little or no beauty 

 in themselves very often destroy by their vigour the rare and 

 beautiful garden vegetation, so that we have not only the ugliness 

 of a brake of Laurel, or half-evergreen Privet, or Pontic Rhododen- 

 dron to survey, but often the fact that these shrubs have overrun and 

 killed far more precious things. And this nursery rubbish having 

 killed every good thing begins to eat up itself, and hence we see so 

 many shrubberies worn out. 



It is not only the ill-effect of these all-devouring evergreens we 

 have to consider, but that they shut out the evergreen flowering 

 shrubs and trees of the highest beauty of colour 

 The nobler ever- as we ^ as f foliage, and the many hardy 

 green flowering Rhododendrons of finest colour. If we would 

 shrubs. only cease to graft them, and instead get them 



from layers on their own roots, we should not be 

 overcrowded with the R. ponticum of the present system. They 

 are not only hardy, in the sense that many of our popular evergreens 

 are hardy in favoured districts or by the sea, so kind as it is to 

 evergreens, but they are hardy everywhere in England. I mean 

 the many broad-leaved Rhododendrons which have mostly come 

 to us from the wild American species, and are hardy in North 

 and Eastern America. Apart from the use of such things, by care- 

 fully selecting their colours we may have not merely an evergreen 

 background of fine and varied green, but also the most precious 

 flowering shrubs ever raised by man and in their natural forms, 

 often varying in fine colour and form too, if we will only cease 

 to compel them to live on one mean and too vigorous shrub. 



As to the kinds of Rhododendron that are raised from the Pontic 

 kind, or even from the Indian Rhododendrons, so far as tried they 

 are not in any way so good as the varieties raised from the North 

 American kinds, which have the fine constitution of R. Catawbiense 

 in them, and of which many are hardy not merely in Old England 

 but in the much more severe winters of New England. Apart from 

 plants of these kinds from layers we may also have them as seed- 

 lings, though the named kinds from layers give us the means of group- 



