342 ENGLISH COTTAGE GARDENS 



than lawn; ours must often be content with having more lawn 

 than flowers. 



OUR COTTAGE GARDEN MATERIAL 



From the nature of things the cottager can grow few trees or 

 none. He hasn't enough space for tall trees, and they would rob 

 his lawn and trees. He can hardly afford evergreens or magnolias. 

 When all cottages are built of permanent material cottagers will 

 get sick of the quick-growing trees like box elder and poplars, 

 because they are short-lived. Flowering dogwood may prove 

 to be his best tree. 



The English cottager has few shrubs or none. Bushes take 

 a good deal of room and do not bloom long as a rule. But the 

 lawn-and-shrub garden may become the commonest in America, 

 because it is easier to care for than a flower garden. The American 

 cottager will go in for long-blooming shrubs, like hydrangeas. He 

 cannot afford azaleas, Japanese maples, white fringe, dwarf horse 

 chestnut. Rarely will he have good roses or lilacs. Let him have 

 Van Houtte's spirea, golden bells, mock orange, Morrow's honey- 

 suckle, and fragrant sumach, hardy hydrangea, cranberry bush, 

 multiflora and rugosa rose, and plenty of Japanese barberry. 

 Then his yard will be attractive the year round. 



Our cottages should be nearly covered with climbers. Every 

 one will want roses and Jackman's clematis, but successes with 

 these will be few. The fittest to survive are Virginia creeper, 

 Japan ivy, Hall's honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, wistaria, bitter- 

 sweet, and wild clematis. The ideal thing would be to have every 

 north and west wall covered with English ivy or climbing 

 euonymus. 



Prophecy is rash, but necessary, for it is only another way 

 of stating our ideals. The American cottager eventually will 



