THE HERBACEOUS BORDER 187 



the idea of a border, and they must not interfere with 

 the health of the other plants in it; for, after all, a 

 border is not a shrubbery. There are luckily a good 

 number of shrubs, compact in their growth as well 

 as beautiful, not too wide rooting, and so long associated 

 with herbaceous plants that they will not look incon- 

 gruous in a herbaceous border. The best of these 

 are the most familiar, such as Rosemary, Lavender, 

 Lavender Cotton (Santolina), some of the Cistuses, 

 some of the Shrubby Veronicas, and Southernwood, 

 which, however, has this disadvantage, that it does 

 not keep its beauty through the winter. All of these 

 shrubs not only have a quiet beauty of their own, 

 but also serve as excellent foils to more brilliant plants; 

 while some of them, of course, are worth growing for 

 their flowers alone. They should, as we have said, 

 be arranged systematically and so as to make the 

 framework of the border's design. If they are dotted 

 about at random, a great part of their effect is lost. 

 But while he is planting them the gardener must 

 consider how he can best combine them with the 

 more ephemeral plants, and he must not arrange 

 them so regularly as to suggest hedges. Their chief 

 purpose is to "pull the border together," to make a 

 kind of permanent pattern that is distributed all over 

 it. This pattern, therefore, must be contrived so 

 that no part of it will be obscured at any time by 

 tall-growing herbaceous plants. There is no use in a 

 well-rounded clump of Lavender if a great Larkspur 

 grows up in front of it. Rather the Larkspur should 



