172 The American Flower Garden 



filling in a gap. For massing in the foreground of groups of shrub- 

 bery its rather coarse habit makes it strongly decorative when 

 viewed from a distance. The forsythia, whose growth in summer 

 is rather loose and straggling, needs the support of its fellows to 

 be effective. So does the red-stemmed dogwood bush, glowing 

 above the snow. Most shrubs require special consideration for 

 the best display of their charms. 



The ungrammatical advice, "Plant thick, thin quick," it is 

 sometimes well to follow. If allowed to crowd one another, shrubs 

 lose their individuality, their identity becomes lost in the mass, 

 they starve and deteriorate. There may be sometimes a doubt 

 as to which should have preference, the artistic or the cultural 

 treatment of shrubbery, but in all, except very rare cases, neither 

 need conflict with the other. It is not necessary to sprinkle shrubs 

 about a place, one specimen here, another there, in order to give 

 each all the room it really needs to display its charms. Its individu- 

 ality can be respected, whether in the shrubbery border or in an 

 isolated position of honour; but no shrub, however beautiful in 

 itself, should be so planted as to spoil the garden picture as a whole. 

 In mass planting the danger is lest the shrubs become so crowded 

 that the characteristics and charm of each are lost, for the sake 

 of the general effect. In specimen planting the greater danger is 

 lest a number of unrelated spots will spoil the unity of the design 

 of the place as a whole. The novice will have no little difficulty 

 in steering his course between Scylla and Charybdis. 



Since the value of a shrub may easily lie less in its bloom than 

 in its general character of form and habit its personality care 

 must be taken not to shear it away. Bushes are usually headed 

 back when they are received from the nursery, or if they grow too 

 tall and spindling, but the reprehensible habit of trimming off all 





