Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



from the Himalayas and the Tyrol, from China and 

 Russia. East and West alike furnish us with them, while 

 at home the gardeners have added their quota of variation 

 in mingling the various species into endless attractive 

 hybrids. But, indeed, if the truth must out, we are 

 now confronted with too many Spiraeas, with a plethora 

 of choice that is overwhelming. "The fact is," says 

 Mr. W. Robinson, in his " English Flower Garden," " we 

 have now too great a number of Spiraeas and too great 

 a similarity among them, and flowering much about the 

 same time. . . . No collection of Spiraeas need number 

 more than a dozen kinds to represent the finest types 

 of beauty of flower and growth." For ordinary gardens 

 even this number is lavish ; so long as one secures a 

 succession of these shrubs in spring and summer, why 

 trouble to grow any but the best? And, perhaps, for 

 general purposes these are : 



i . Spircea arguta, a hybrid with the Japanese Spircea 

 Thunbergi for one parent and S. multiflora as the other. 

 It takes after the first-named parent in coming into flower 

 in the very early spring, for before the winter nip is out 

 of the air its slender arching branches are so covered with 

 clusters of tiny white blossoms that it seems as though 

 the whole shrub were left laden with a keepsake from 

 those snows which so lately passed over its head. All 

 the Spiraeas are characterised by the massing together of 



many tiny flowers ; their whole effect lies in the concen- 



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