918 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



urban home, located on a new development or erstwhile 

 farm pasturage, a fine, handsome, stucco house on a raw 

 and treeless lot. Four Norway maples had already been 

 perpetrated upon the front lawn by the development 

 company, thereby ruining any possibility of a deep, rest- 

 ful greensward. I advised the removal of the two central 

 ones to the rear flanks of the house. These were 3-inch 

 nursery specimens, easily transplanted because of the 

 large, compact ball of roots which the root-pruning and 

 transplanting at the nursery gives 

 them, so there was no difficulty 

 about moving them around in the 

 proper season, which should be 

 after the sap is down in October. 



The front bay windows of the 

 living room faced the street and 

 under them I advised a border of 

 the short and slow-growing ever- 

 greens, Retinospora Plumosa. 

 American Hemlock, Xordmann's 

 Fir (a short, squatty variety with 

 thick dark green horizontal 

 branches) one or two Biotas, a 

 slender Irish juniper at one pro- 

 jecting corner (but not at the 

 other, lest a banal symmetry over- 

 take us) and in the deep re-en- 

 trant angle behind the porch, a 5- 

 foot Norway spruce. 



At the end of the walk leading 

 up to the porch entrance we put 

 in a small blue Koster's spruce on 

 each side of the steps, this being 

 the nearest approach to anything 

 formal attempted. Along the 

 south wall of the house went 

 flowering shrubs, two deutzias, a 

 wigelia and a forsythia (of which 

 more anon). This was all just a 

 little suburban plot, which is the 

 easiest thing in the world to clut- 

 ter up with shrubs, we depended 

 for the rest of our effect upon 

 a small but untroubled lawn and 

 a side border of privet hedge. I 

 allowed him, however, one red 

 Japanese maple, set about oppo- 

 site the corner of the house, across 

 the path on the south side on the 

 narrow strip of lawn between it and the hedge. 



The second diagram shows a rather large place, 100 

 by 150 feet, the house in Dutch colonial on a low knoll, 

 with a rolling lawn slo])ing down to the sidewalk. .A 

 privet hedge bordered this plot on both sides, with a 

 small corner extending for some 10 feet along the front 

 lot line on each side. These corners were filled witli 

 evergreen shrubbery of the following selections: In the 

 angle of the east corner a retinospora plumo.sa. tightly 



js-c i^ 



I'lanting diagram suitable for a suburban cottage on a small 

 lot. Frontage, 50 feet. 



green foliage. In front of it a 2-foot Koster's blue 

 spruce and a pyramidal Japanese retinospora, the three 

 trees forming a triangle in the corner of the hedge. The 

 foreground of this group consisted of a small 18-inch 

 liiota Orientalis and a .'5-foot Thread-Branched retinos- 

 pora with an American pitch pine terminating the rear 

 I)eak of the group. In the west corner, where the hedge 

 corner was twenty feet on a side, the interior triangle 

 began with a retinospora plumosa set in the corner, on 

 each front of it an American hem- 

 lock and a Japanese retinospora, 

 and in front of these four 

 trees a small arborvitae, a 2-foot 

 Koster's blue spruce, a Biota of 

 about the same size, and a Nor- 

 way spruce terminating the rear 

 peak of the group. This would 

 become a rather large tree in 

 time and was therefore planted 

 some -1 feet from the hedge, and. 

 as in this case the planted area 

 continued back along the hedge in 

 a long sweep planted with roses 

 and flowering shrubs, it was fol- 

 lowed at once with a dense bed 

 of rosa rugosa, whose persistent, 

 glossy, dark green foliage made a 

 fitting transitional selection to the 

 deciduous shrubs. The rosa rogo- 

 sa is that very spiny rose bush, 

 with the large deep red flowers 

 like the wild rose and the great 

 red rose-apples, persistent and 

 ornamental all through the winter. 

 Pruned down close it comes up 

 denser and thicker each season 

 and a bed of them is always a 

 striking ornament winter or sum- 

 mer, either as a border for a path 

 or for a hedge. 



The deciduous shrubs began 

 with a rose magnolia, a fine 

 flower bouquet in the early 

 s])ring ; then two forsythias 

 (golden bells), conspicuous in 

 the early spring before the leaves 

 are out ; then, along the narrow- 

 est sweep of the shrubbery came 

 the roses, lots of them, all kinds, 

 the pride and glory of the gracious lady who presides 

 over all the growing things about this place. Behind these 

 the bed curves out again to the driveway terminating the 

 lawn, and we have more space for planting. Here were 

 the larger flowering shrubs, three deutzias forming the 

 foundation of the group, with a wigelia and two spireas 

 (\'an Ilouteii) in the foreground. Worked into this 

 bank of flowering shrubs are different colored azalias 

 and similar small bushes, and, terminating the bed where 



clipped, forming a large globular cone of feathery blue- ii reaches the driveway is a group of the spreading hy- 



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