244 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



always " between the devil and the deep sea," trying to keep back 

 the hungry Yew roots all the while, it being quite easy to secure a 

 background which, instead of eating up the Roses, would support 

 and shelter them beautifully, walls, Oak palings, other trellises, or 

 espaliers of bushy climbers, like Honeysuckle and Clematis. 



Another bad way is to place lines of Yew hedges so close together 

 that the sun can hardly sweeten the ground between them, this being 

 generally the result of carrying out some book plan, without thought 

 of the ground or its use. More stupid still is cutting up level lawns 

 with Yew hedges across them, or sometimes projected into them a 

 little way, with flower-beds in between, within a couple of feet of the 

 all-devouring Yew, all this very costly Yew planting working for 

 ugliness, and against the health, and even life, of all the flowers 

 near. 



It is not only the needs of our own greatly increased garden flora 

 new races of plants never known to the old people, such as our Tea 

 Roses and the rich collections of shrubs from Japan and other 

 countries, that will not bear mutilation or robbing at the root that 

 should make us pause, as, even in what remains to us of old flower 

 gardens on ancient tapestries and pictures, we may see some 

 evidence that the lady had room in her flower garden to look 

 around and work among her flowers, unencumbered by a maze of 

 robbing hedges. Some, perhaps, of these close lines of Yews, set 

 with such little thought, owe their origin to the maze idea ; but the 

 maze was for a wholly different end, and in it we have only to grow 

 its trees and the paths are free for the roots. In the Rose and flower 

 garden the cost and care to get an artistic and beautiful result are too 

 heavy to have them eaten up before our eyes by the hungriest of 

 tree roots. 



A gardener with shears in his hand is generally doing fool's work, 



but there is much difference between his clipping old or sheltering 



lines of Yews, or even the peacocks in Box, and 



Clipped evergreen tne clipping which goes on in some gardens where 



shrubs. beds are filled with small evergreen bushes instead 



of flowers. Some effect may be obtained in a way, 



but the bushes usually get far too thick, and then the shears are used 



to keep them in bounds, and what ought to be graceful groups of 



flowers or shrubs of good form becomes flat, hard, and ugly. The 



clipping may have been designed at first, but oftener it is done to 



repress overgrowth. A more stupid way of filling the beds of a 



flower gardqn could hardly be imagined, because we lose all the 



grace and form of the shrubs, and also the chance of seeing flowers 



growing among them. It is one of the prettiest phases of flower 



gardening when Lilies, Gladioli, and other graceful plants spring 



