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How to Make a Flower Garden 



winter only. Some advise severe annual pruning for the althea, or Rose of 

 Sharon ; but I do not, for I do not admire a stumpy shrub. Keep it low- 

 branched, but let the shoots get up and spread out. The pure white, single- 

 flowered one is the prettiest of all, and it needs very httle pruning. 



Among cur commonest garden shrubs are spireas, deutzias, mock- 

 orange, weigelas, snowballs, lilacs, forsythias, magnoHas, kerria, and sweet 



The woods as a background for informal borders of shrubbery and flowers. Cut-leaved staghorn sumach, 

 Hydrangea hortensis, and Lilium testaceum 



shrubs: and a word about these may suggest how to treat the others. Take 

 Van Houtte's spirea : all it needs is occasional thinning out of the old wood ; 

 do not shorten the arching sprays. The crenata deutzias and mock-orange 

 (generally known as syringa) shrubs are likely to grow very tall and full- 

 branched from the bottom. Thin them well out from the base, and cut 

 some of the tallest stems back half way, but do not shorten the side branches 

 or well-ripened arching sprays. Lilacs, either the named varieties, Persian, 

 Villosa, or the late-blooming tree species, as Pekinensis or Japonica, seldom 

 need any pruning, except a watchfulness for suckers from the stocks on 

 which they have been grafted : remove these as soon as seen. Weigelas 



