160 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



top.' Evelyn had a love for shrubs, and prided him- 

 self on having introduced the Alattnws from Languedoc, 

 but his list of shrubs is a very poor one. The very 

 name of shrub was almost a name of contempt, or at 

 least it was chiefly used to mark the vegetation of a 

 rough, wild country. Spenser's 'gloomy glade was 

 covered with boughs and shrubs.' In Caliban's country 

 there was ' neither bush nor shrub to bear off any 

 weather at all.' Etymologically, the word is the same 

 as scrub ; we still speak of a scrubby waste, and the 

 word survives as a place-name in Wormwood Scrubs. 



But in our day shrubberies ought not to be scrub- 

 beries, for our modern shrill* can no longer be spoken 

 of as rough plants fit only for a wild common. Since 

 the middle of the last century, many hundreds of 

 hardy shrubs have been introduced from North and 

 South America, Australia and New Zealand, China and 

 Japan, and the Himalayas. Yet it is still a most 

 unusual thing to see a good collection of shrubs except 

 in gardens where the owner is something of a lx>tanist. 

 In the hundreds and thousands of new gardens that 

 are made, the shrubs are left to the nurseryman, whose 

 collection is limited to a few species which he supplies 

 by the hundred to all alike. Yet it need not be so, 

 and nothing gives so much character and charm to a 

 garden, or so much breaks the monotony that makes so 



