190 Old Time Gardens 



an artist to prune the Forsythia suspensa. You can 

 steal the sunshine for your homes ere winter is gone 

 by breaking long sprays of the Sunshine Bush and 

 placing them in tall deep jars of water. Split up 

 the ends of the stems that they may absorb plen- 

 tiful water, and the golden plumes will soon open to 

 fullest glory within doors. 



There is another yellow flowered shrub, the Cor- 

 chorus, which seems as old as the Lilac, for it is 

 ever found in old gardens ; but it proves to be a 

 Japanese shrub which we have had only a hundred 

 years. The little, deep yellow, globular .blossoms 

 appear in early spring and sparsely throughout the 

 whole summer. The plant isn't very adorning in its 

 usual ragged growth, but it was universally planted. 



It may be seen from the shrubs of popular 

 growth which I have named that the present glory 

 of our shrubberies is from the Japanese and Chinese 

 shrubs, which came to us in the nineteenth century 

 through Thunberg, Fortune, and other bold collec- 

 tors. We had no shrub-sellers of importance in the 

 eighteenth century ; the garden lover turned wholly 

 to the seedsman and bulb-grower for garden sup- 

 plies, just as we do to-day to fill our old-fashioned 

 gardens. The new shrubs and plants from China 

 and Japan did not clash with the old garden flowers, 

 they seemed like kinsfolk who had long been sepa- 

 rated and rejoiced in being reunited ; they were 

 indeed fellow-countrymen. We owed scores of our 

 older flowers to the Orient, among them such 

 important ones as the Lilac, Rose, Lily, Tulip, 

 Crown Imperial. 



