AND GROUNDS. 153 



facing the main entrance steps, we would plant the pendulous 

 Norway spruce, AMes excclsa inverta ; along the fence towards the 

 front, a dense mass of low-growing evergreens ; along the fence on 

 the other side of the spruce (opposite the bay-window), a hemlock 

 hedge, merging as it recedes from the front to the grape-trellis into a 

 belt of evergreens. The groups of shrubs indicated in many places 

 against the house, must be of the best species, which grow from 

 two to seven feet in height ; and ought to embrace in each group 

 one or more shrubs with fragrant flowers, so that there shall be no 

 summer month when the windows will not be perfumed from them. 

 It is becoming a fashion to decry the planting of shrubs in contact 

 with dwelling houses. This fashion is a part of an extreme 

 reaction that possesses the public mind against the old and un- 

 healthy mode of embowering houses so completely under trees, 

 and packing yards so densely with shrubs, that many homes were 

 made dark and damp enough to induce consumption and other 

 diseases ; and physicians have been obliged to protest against 

 their injurious effects on the health of the inmates. But low- 

 growing shrubs planted against the basement-walls of suburban 

 houses, and rising only a few feet higher than the first floor, are 

 not open to any such objections. A house that is Jiested in shrubs 

 which seem to spring out of its nooks and corners with some- 

 thing of the freedom that characterizes similar vegetation spring- 

 ing naturally along stone walls and fences, seems to express the 

 mutual recognition and dependence of nature and art ; the 

 shrubs loving the warmth of the house-walls, and the house 

 glad to be made more charming in the setting of their ver- 

 dure and blossoms. Many pleasing shrubs will do well where 

 their roots can feel the warmth that foundation-walls retain in 

 winter, which will not flourish in open exposed ground. Some will 

 do well in shady nooks and northern exposures which cannot be 

 grown in sunny projections ; others need all the sun of the latter 

 exposures, and are grateful in addition for all the reflected heat 

 from the house-walls. The foundations (provided of course that 

 they are of a deep and substantial character) thus become protect- 

 ing walls that offer to the skillful planter many studies in the 

 selection and arrangement of small shrubs. No well-constructed 



