144 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



We could ill spare the different kinds of evergreen 

 berberis and cotoneaster, laurustinus and pyra- 

 cantha, and others ; but there is exquisite beauty 

 as well, and not to be forgotten, in the tracery 

 of bare branches a beauty we are learning to esti- 

 mate at its true value more and more in the winter 

 landscape. What, for instance, is more graceful 

 in Nature than the drooping spray of silver birch, 

 whether it be set against the still background of 

 a grey December sky or lightly sways, wind-tossed, 

 in fitful March sunshine. Now, a shrubbery, from 

 time out of mind, seems to have been coupled 

 with evergreen shrubs, and more particularly with 

 cherry laurel and privet, aucuba, euonymus, and 

 the like, until the very name has become associated 

 in our minds with a part of the garden that is 

 dull and wanting in interest, and only to be re- 

 sorted to for shelter on a day too rough for exer- 

 cise farther afield. Many of these evergreen 

 shrubs, besides, have been treated as bushes, and 

 cut and pruned to keep them within due bounds, 

 because the popular conception of a shrub is of a 

 plant of low and branching growth which should 

 reach a height of no more than six feet at utmost, 

 whereas many shrubs so-called are by nature mode- 

 rate-sized trees of some twenty to thirty feet high. 

 The common cherry laurel is a case in point. It 

 is true that for some positions a laurel hedge is 

 as suitable as any, and lends itself with impunity 

 to annual clipping; but the fine character of the 

 cherry laurel is never realised until it is seen 

 either singly or in a well-grown cluster of trees, 

 with stout branching stems bearing aloft their 



