WAY-SIDE HINTS 



in a wall of soft green and twist away the 

 branchlets. The thorn-bearing shrubs are 

 by no means so inviting to their ventures of 

 this sort. 



I have not spoken of the holly — of which 

 many charming hedges are to be found on 

 English estates — because the British plant has 

 not proved itself wholly equal to our climate, 

 and the American holly (besides being some- 

 what inferior in glossiness and density of 

 foliage) has not yet been commonly introduced 

 even among nurserymen. In the way, how- 

 ever, of leafy screens for garden parterres and 

 terraces, I have great hopes of what may yet 

 be accomplished with our Rhododendron and 

 Kalmia latifolia. The lank, lean habit of this 

 latter under its ordinary transplanting is no 

 measure of its capacity for making a full, 

 rounded, dense wall of green. Whoever has 

 wandered over high-lying pasture-lands of New 

 England which have recently been cleared of 

 their forest growth, and has seen the wanton, 

 luxuriant, crowded tufts of Kalmia shooting 

 from the old roots, can form some measure of 

 the capacity of the shrub for good screen effects. 

 The lank growth, too, of the Rhododendron 

 in a few shaded swamp-lands where it finds 

 its habitat in New England, is no indication of 



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