CHAPTER XVII 



WHAT AMERICA CAN TEACH ENGLAND ABOUT 



SHRUBS 



The only important material except water-lilies in which we have 

 a striking climatic advantage over England Why we have 

 ignored our opportunity and have even started on a false scent 



THE only material in which America has a striking climatic 

 advantage over England is shrubbery. When my col- 

 league, Mr. Leonard Barren, came to America, the one 

 horticultural feature that struck him as new and strange was the 

 burst of spring, especially the dramatic fortnight when the fruit 

 trees are in bloom. For in England spring comes so early and 

 gradually that March is a month of considerable floral charm, with 

 its thousands of daffodils and Lenten lilies, its exquisite blue carpets 

 of Grecian wind flowers, and its lambent sheets of gold wrought by 

 the winter aconite. But in America March is a rough and flower- 

 less month in the North, and spring comes with a rush when the 

 orchards bloom. England's fruit trees are mostly hidden from 

 view behind high brick walls in private gardens. And while 

 Americans know comparatively little about amateur fruit grow- 

 ing for quality, we lead the world in commercial orcharding; 

 consequently our whole landscape is a mass of shimmering white 

 at the poetic moment of the year, just before the trees leaf out. 

 Now, the largest group of flowering shrubs belongs to the same 

 family as the fruit trees, and 90 per cent, of all our shrubs 



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