330 . THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



stereotyped things, mainly those that grow freely, and, owing 

 to the over-use of weed-evergreens like Privet, which are without 

 beauty, and offensive in odour when in flower. The presence 

 of such things is one of the causes of the miserable aspect of the 

 shrubberies in many gardens, which might be very beautiful and 

 interesting with a varied life. Many shrubs of little or no beauty 

 in themselves very often destroy by their vigour the rare and 

 beautiful garden vegetation, so that we have not only the ugliness 

 of a brake of Laurel, or half-evergreen Privet, or Pontic Rhododen- 

 dron to survey, but often the fact that these shrubs have overrun and 

 killed far more precious things. And this nursery rubbish having 

 killed every good thing begins to eat up itself, and hence we see so 

 many shrubberies worn out. 



THE NOBLER EVERGREEN FLOWERING SHRUBS. It is not only 

 the ill-effect of these all-devouring evergreens we have to consider, 

 but what they shut out : the evergreen flowering shrubs and 

 trees of the highest beauty of colour as well as of foliage, and 

 the many hardy Rhododendrons of finest colour. If we would only 

 cease to graft them, and instead get them from layers on their own 

 roots, we should not be overcrowded with the R. ponticum of the 

 present system. They are not only hardy in the sense that many of 

 our popular evergreens are hardy, i.e. in favoured districts or by the 

 sea, so kind as it is to evergreens, but everywhere in England. I 

 mean the many broad-leaved Rhododendrons which have mostly 

 come to us from the wild American species, and are hardy in North 

 and Eastern America. Apart from the use of such things, by care- 

 fully selecting their colours we may have not merely an evergreen 

 background of fine and varied green, but also the most precious 

 flowering shrubs ever raised by man and in their natural forms, often 

 varying in fine colour and form too, if we will only cease to compel 

 them to live on one mean and too vigorous shrub. 



As to the kinds of Rhododendron that are raised from the Pontic 

 kind or even from the Indian Rhododendrons, so far as tried they are 

 not in any way so good as the varieties raised from the North 

 American kinds, and which have the fine constitution of R. Catawbiense 

 in them, and of which many are hardy not merely in Old England 

 but in the much more severe winters of New England. Apart from 

 plants of these kinds from layers we may also have them as seed- 

 lings, though the named kinds from layers give us the means of group- 

 ing a finely coloured kind which may often be desirable. It is also 

 very probable that we shall, as various regions of the northern world 

 are opened up, introduce to cultivation other fine wild species, and get 

 precious races from them, so for many reasons the sooner we get out 

 of the common routine of the nurseries in grafting every fine kind we 



