Home landscape 167 



evergreen is one of the most desirable of shrubs when 

 kept in its appropriate place, viz. where it has ample 

 space — under trees on the margins of woods and 

 copses. In accordance with the ordinary ideas of garden- 

 ing, this shrub is the first obtained from the nursery, 

 as it is also the cheapest, to adorn the approach to the 

 dwelling or the garden at the rear. Placed usually in 

 the very front of the border, and quite close to the walk, 

 it grows most rapidly into a vigorous shrub, its shoots 

 often attaining in a single season 3, 4, or even 5 feet in 

 length. It is impossible to exaggerate the evil of which 

 this rampant shrub has been the cause ; the smaller 

 conifers, such as Thujas, Junipers, and Cypresses, as 

 well as Bays, Laurustinus, and Arbutus, are constantly 

 found to be destroyed by its wealth of shoots.' 



I have enjoyed the utmost satisfaction in ordering 

 hundreds to be cut down and carted away, thus not only 

 developing to the view many better things, but opening 

 the finest vistas and distant peeps of scenery. 



Ring planting. The commonest practice of the planter 

 of our day, in all parks and open spaces, the most precious 

 of all to keep, is dotting about rings fenced with iron. 

 This is the most inartistic thing he can do for effect 

 or the good growth of trees. It gives a dotty, hope- 

 less effect, and is wrong in every way, and most of all 

 for the life of the trees. The mass of trees is not suffi- 

 cient to give the shelter of the wood or any other of its 

 gains. The fencing is doubly costly because of the small 

 area of the clumps. We should plant in clouds instead 

 of dots, i. e. to mass the planting more in weak corners 

 of fields and where we want shelter, or group them in 

 the way in which they wnll not spot over the landscape, 

 and the trees will have a chance of attaining woodland 



