66 VARIETY IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 



boles of great maples or elms, the sublime and the ridiculous, 

 Dignity and Impudence, as Landseer's old picture has it! No. 

 I mean that little reaches of these cream-white, low-growing 

 flowers of spring somewhere beyond or in the foreground of 

 Prunus subhirtella would surely mean an added interest in the 

 tree as part of a composition while that tree is young. 



Another use of these lovely cherries is the setting of them 

 wide apart in rows along a broad walk, with flowery borders 

 below them reaching from tree to tree. Such a picture is seen 

 in Sir Herbert Maxwell's Scottish Gardens, opposite page 46. 

 In the simplest of Perthshire gardens, "Gartincaber," its walls 

 overlaid with that mellow beauty, the patina of time, here are 

 flowering, below blossoming trees, aconites and snowdrops, 

 daffodils and windflowers, bloodroot, violets white and purple, 

 primroses and oxslips of many hues — "all old friends, the older 

 the better to be loved," says Sir Herbert. These border a broad 

 walk, interrupted by an old dial, great trees and ancient walls 

 and towers beyond, with violet shadows throwing lovely net- 

 work along the path so edged with flowers of spring. 



Suppose for one week in spring in some small American garden 

 a great outburst of gay color be required. Punctuate little cross 

 walks of such a garden at intervals of ten feet with Prunus 

 triloba on its own roots. Let a multitude of hyacinths and tulips 

 glow below the almond, planted either in stiff rows — really a 

 parterre — or in loose drifts, and see what strange new ecstasies 

 the month of May will bring. Malus Arnoldiana, set between 

 the flowering almonds in the rows or interspersed among these 

 where there is room for large plantings, would give two weeks 

 of pink buds and flowers. Another week might readily be added 

 by planting in such a place Bechtel's crab. Fancy three weeks 

 of rosy bloom in May, each type of flowering tree not to be 

 really missed as its successor begins to flower. 



