22 Evergreens. 



si(i!e, suggests evergreens ; and their free use is resolved upon. Impatient 

 for immediate results, we urge our nursery-man to their realization. He can 

 but obey ; and we plunge darkly on, forgetting, or unconscious of, size, color, 

 habit, and sure that we shall know when and how to thin. Our untutored 

 imagination cannot picture to us our Norway spruces at fifty years, need- 

 ing as many feet to develop their sweeping limbs ; and when, some day, 

 we find the dead wood half way up their trunks for want of light and air, 

 remedy is impossible : the only hope is in a fresh start for a result we may 

 never live to see. We repent our lack of care and courage ; but it is too 

 late. We have purchased our knowledge, but at high cost. Long years, 

 the dark shadow of a misplaced clump, whose growth has passed our reck- 

 oning, has excluded the morning sun from our breakfast-room and flower- 

 window, and wrung from us the oft-repeated denunciation of gloomy 

 evergreens. Bat the gloom is not in our trees : it springs from our impa- 

 tient, heedless, ignorant misuse of them. Our memories of the sunny hill- 

 side were faithful, the example perfect : but we knew not how to follow it ; 

 and how should we ? 



Let us begin again, but this time use reason and common sense, and 

 either take professional advice, — the only way for the busy man, — or if we 

 have leisure, and seek occupation, we can easily go where we shall find 

 example. See Wellesley, the charming country-home of one who has given 

 years of time and thought and study to this subject ; a landscape-gardener, 

 who recognizes a good thing, however common, when he finds it ; who does 

 not reject natives, though few know as well how to use their foreign con- 

 geners : he avails of all that Nature offers. Look there at the evergreens : 

 find the gloom under their shadow if you can. Mark the native and exotic 

 side by side, nestling under the protecting shelter : the rhododendrons, the 

 kalmias, the andromedas, do not seem to find gloom. Color, shelter, habit, 

 all lend their aid ; and the result is success such as all may well seek to 

 imitate. 



All this has required time, thought, and knowledge ; involving more of 

 the former than active men of business can well spare, and more of the 

 latter than they have opportunity to acquire. They must avoid that out- 

 lay at least ; but they must also seek to escape the vexation, delay, and 

 expense attendant upon hasty and inconsiderate action. 



