172 COME INTO THE GARDEN 



period. It is this to which I had reference in 

 suggesting the sacrifice of summer in order to 

 favor winter. A hberal use of what we may call 

 the fine winter-effect shrubs will curtail the 

 number of summer-effect varieties that may be 

 planted, but I feel that the gain in winter more 

 than compensates the small loss in summer. For 

 other things will furnish summer flowers, even 

 though the continuous shrub bloom is given 

 over, but nothing save the certain shrubbery 

 masses selected for it can give to winter the 

 warmth and cheer which lie in these for the 

 year-around home. 



The rhododendron is probably the best known 

 of all the broad-leaved evergreens — and almost 

 the last one that should be used next, or near 

 to, a building, I hasten to add. For of all the 

 things comprising this great class it is the most 

 essentially wild in every sense of the word. 

 Not that any of them take enthusiastically to 

 domestication — they have to be catered to 

 meticulously — but at least they fit themselves 

 into its setting harmoniously. But the rhodo- 

 dendron cannot, for ungainliness. It does not 

 sulk and it blooms and grows; but it always 

 seems to me like some great, wild, unlettered 

 cow-puncher (which all cow-punchers I know 

 are not !) booted and spurred and in full regalia. 



