TREES ABOUT TOWN 



storms sweep around, besides its prime display. 

 Let wild ctematis climb wherever it will. Then 

 laurels may come after these, put somewhere by 

 themselves, with their thick changeless leaves, un- 

 pleasant to the touch; no one ever gathers a spray. 



Rhododendrons it is unkind to attack, for in 

 themselves they afford a rich flower. It is not the 

 rhododendron, but the abuse of it, which must be 

 protested against. Whether the soil suits or not 

 and, for the most part, it does not suit rho- 

 dodendrons are thrust in everywhere. Just walk 

 in amongst them behind the show and look 

 at the spindly, crooked stems, straggling how they 

 may, and then look at the earth under them, where 

 not a weed even will grow. The rhododendron 

 is admirable in its place, but it is often overdone 

 and a failure, and has no right to exclude those 

 shrubs that are fitter. Most of the foreign shrubs 

 about these semi-country seats look exactly like 

 the stiff and painted little wooden trees that are 

 sold for children's toys, and, like the toys, are the 

 same colour all the year round. 



Now, if you enter a copse in spring the eye is 

 delighted with cowslips on the banks where the 

 sunlight comes, with bluebells, or earlier with 

 anemones and violets, while later the ferns rise. 

 But enter the semi-parks of the semi-country seat, 

 with its affected assumption of countryness, and 

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