1 66 The American Flower Garden 



group of them is improved by more or less shrubbery about its base. 

 Artists talk much about the sky line of pictures, but the artistic 

 gardener, realising that the earth line is at least as important, 

 diversifies and adorns it with blossoming shrubs wherever he can, 

 learning from nature how to plant. Her woodland borders, which 

 draw the eye gradually from the earth to where the tall tree-tops 

 seem to rest against the sky, are fringed with viburnums, cornels, 

 alder, chokeberry, shad bush, elder, sumac, wild roses and a host 

 of other shrubs that not only fill the intermediate spaces but supply 

 the intermediate tones in her colour scale. What beauty springs 

 up along the old fence rows where nature is left free to plant them 

 as she will! 



Shrubs grow so readily that they are the main dependence for 

 quick results. It would take years for trees unaided by them to 

 make a new place homelike. No one cares to wait half a lifetime 

 to screen his grounds, shut off the service end of his house and 

 conceal the drying ground and outbuildings, when a hundred hardy 

 blossoming shrubs, that are good enough for mass planting and 

 that can be bought for twenty dollars, will quickly hide unsightly 

 places. While it never pays to buy inferior stock, however low 

 in price, many a lovely shrub is so easily propagated that it can be 

 sold at a profit for the price of a cigar. For a single choice 

 specimen, however, one that merits isolation to display its charms, 

 who would grudge a dollar ? Where only a small sum can be spent 

 for planting a place, the list will surely include a preponderance 

 of shrubs, because with them greater diversity of form, colour and 

 texture, more lasting beauty and abundance of bloom may be had 

 at a low cost than from plants of any other class. 



Trees cannot well be planted next a house without robbing it 

 of light and air, but tall shrubs as a background for lower ones 



