Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



colour over a large area, and naturally in a garden, 

 where space is circumscribed, this effect cannot be 

 obtained, but the disability is largely overcome if the 

 Double Gorse be planted instead of the ordinary wild 

 form. 



The Double Gorse Ulex Europceus, var. flore 

 pleno is a variety that appeared suddenly in the gar- 

 den of Mr. John Miller, a well-known nurseryman at 

 Bristol, about the year 1828, and its characteristic is 

 that its flowers are " double " ; therefore each, indi- 

 vidually, represents an enhanced spot of brilliancy. 

 So an irregular clump of some large spreading shrub, 

 several yards in diameter, may stand for the concen- 

 trated essence of a whole Gorse common, and its flare 

 of colour will dominate the whole situation. It is 

 sometimes objected that the Double Gorse is short-lived 

 a few years being its limit and that considerable 

 attention is required in the way of cutting back the 

 branches every three or four years and then relayering 

 if one is to keep the patch in full vigour. But a 

 Double Gorse, well known to the writer, has lived its 

 own uninterfered-with existence in a Cambridge garden 

 for over twenty years, and still appears in the zenith 

 of its day. 



Gorse, however, has its definite likes and dislikes, 

 even in the wild state, and though so common in this 

 country and in the west of Europe generally, it is un- 



54 



