PLANTING FOR AUTUMN AND WINTER 



EFFECT 1 



CONSIDERING how many people in England spend Winter 

 the Autumn and Winter in their country homes, and Colour 

 the Spring and Summer in London, it is curious that 

 more pains are not taken to plant trees and shrubs which are at 

 their best during the later season of the year. I propose in 

 this paper to make some suggestions as to plants suitable for 

 this purpose, and as to the way in which they should be treated. 

 It is quite a mistake to suppose that to get good winter-colour- 

 ing it is necessary to obtain rare and expensive or delicate 

 specimens ; some of the finest effects can be produced by quite 

 cheap and common stuff if properly handled. For instance, 

 among trees, no finer contrast of coloured stems exists than that 

 between Scotch Firs, when they have reached a certain age and 

 lost their lower boughs, and Silver Birches, if they are inter- 

 mingled, and the latter are pruned up to a height of some 1 2 

 or 15 feet. Again, among shrubs, the common Snowberry 

 (Sympboricarpos racemosus], which generally occurs in neglected 

 shrubberies as an unpleasing half-starved weed, if the suckers 

 are collected and planted in a solid mass in open ground, with 

 nothing over them to obstruct the light and air, and if in the 

 spring, when the sap is rising and the first sign of foliage peeps 

 out, they are cut down level with the soil, so that nothing is 

 visible, they will produce an appearance hardly recognisable by 

 those who are only accustomed to them under ordinary condi- 

 tions. They make a compact growth during the year of 2 feet 



1 Reprinted by permission from the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society. 



163 



