RIGHT USE OF FLOWERING SHRUBS 243 



single flowering shrub rightly placed in front of a 

 dark barrier of greenery has your eye to itself and 

 satisfies it, like an altarpiece in a quiet church. Nor 

 does it compete with any border of flowers near it, 

 for their beauty is on a different scale and of a dif- 

 ferent order. But in a large garden formally designed 

 there may be a greater abundance of flowering shrubs 

 than is possible with this accidental use of them, if 

 only they are arranged in an orderly fashion and 

 without too great variety. The best Rose gardens 

 give us hints for the treatment of other flowering 

 shrubs by which we have not yet profited much. 

 There is no reason why we should not have shrubberies 

 arranged like roseries, not in a thicket all struggling 

 together for life and notice, but widely spaced at 

 regular intervals and with regular repetitions and 

 alternations. In such a shrubbery only a few kinds 

 should be planted. Harmony and simplicity, rather 

 than variety, should be aimed at, and the different 

 shrubs should be chosen so as to agree or contrast 

 well together in the colour and character of their 

 foliage and in their habit of growth, and also to pro- 

 vide a succession of bloom. Lower growing shrubs 

 might be placed between the taller ones, just as dwarf 

 Roses fill up the spaces in a rosery between the oc- 

 casional great Pillar Roses. Thus a shrubbery with 

 pink Hawthorn and the tallest Philadelphus (Syringa) 

 alternating at regular intervals might be filled up 

 with masses of Lavender and Cytisus praecox. But 

 the possible combinations of such a shrubbery are 



