14 THE LITTLE GARDEN 



disadvantages for the owner, and for his neighbor as well. A tree 

 is a great beauty; it is a comfort and a convenience; but some- 

 times one might be quite unable to give it hospitality. And the 

 interest of other planting will readily divert the mind from what 

 it cannot have. 



There is an informal plan set forth on page 19 of the "Book of 

 Garden Plans," by Mr. Stephen A. Hamblin, which I might 

 profitably mention here. This is the informal planting of a small 

 lot reduced to its lowest terms. It is evidently a plan for an older 

 time than ours: no automobile necessities seem to have existed; 

 the owner was, evidently, satisfied to stay at home and play cro- 

 quet. The matter of economy of expense and of upkeep was 

 apparently in mind; and there was space for a few trees, as well as 

 for a goodly variety of shrubs. Five creepers, or vines, are speci- 

 fied about the foundation of the modest house, standing in a lot 

 ninety by thirty feet. The trees used are, to the west of the house 

 and close beside it, a sugar maple {Acer saccharum) ; just back of 

 the house and still to the west, a Catalpa spedosa; and beyond 

 these, in the corner of the lot, two specimens of the ailanthus or 

 Tree of Heaven. Remembering all too vividly as I do, from child- 

 hood days in Maryland and Pennsylvania, the bad odor of the 

 flowers of the latter, I should always omit the ailanthus. The 

 foundation planting of the house is Spirea Thunbergii, Ribes 

 odoratum, or flowering currant, and Colutea arborescens, bladder 

 senna — all good. The rear end of the little place is hedged by an 

 informal grouping of five-leaved aralia {Acantho panax pentO' 

 phyllum), Japanese barberry (Berberis Thunbergii), staghorn su- 

 mac {Rhus typhina), and Ramanas rose {Rosa rugosa) — a good 

 planting aU but the rose, which is not, in my opinion, a practical 

 shrub, and may well be supplanted by such a shrub as Phila- 

 delphus avalanche, a plant without a fault. Near the sumac, and 

 along the east boundary-line, comes a group of flowering rasp- 



