THE COUNTRY YARD 



ration. Holly and other berry-bearing bushes 

 are to be prized also, for their fruit is as bril- 

 liant as flowers at a time when nature carries 

 her softest yet most brilliant effects away from 

 the earth and paints them over the sky. There 

 are fashions in trees, as there are in shirt-waists 

 and parasols, and a present tendency is toward 

 low-growing species, of " weeping " habit, 

 though willows are no longer elected. " Weep- 

 In' willers " environ some New England man- 

 sions still, and In central New York a few ave- 

 nues of poplars remain before the abodes of 

 " elegance " — Lombardy poplars, " the proper 

 tree, let them say what they will, to surround a 

 gentleman's mansion," as an old writer observes. 

 Tubbed trees of dark and solid green, privet, 

 spruce, the West Indian bay, palms and rubber- 

 plants are always useful, and In a small yard 

 they can surround a floral square or circle. One 

 fashion of dealing with them Is to m.ake a gravel 

 ring about a flower-bed, place the tubs upon this 

 ring, and plant a border of foliage plants still 

 outside of them, to conceal the lower part of the 

 tubs, as In Fig. 22. 



If the long dimension of the house fronts on 

 107 



