THE RENOVATION OF OLD PLACES. 343 



baskets ; provided they stand in places where it is appropriate to 

 have flower-vases. 



Old shrubs of any of the standard species, if of large size, even 

 though unshapely, may often be turned to good account in the 

 places where they stand, by using them as centres for groups of 

 smaller shrubs. Sometimes their very irregularity of outline will 

 make them picturesque objects to stand conspicuously alone on the 

 lawn. Often a shrub of noble size has been hid by inferior shrubs 

 and trees crowding it, which may all be removed to bring it into 

 full relief. The beauty of full and well grown single specimens of 

 our most common shrubs is as little known as though they were 

 the most recent introductions from Japan. Not one American in 

 a thousand, even among those most observant of sylvan forms, has 

 ever seen a perfectly grown bush-honeysuckle, lilac, snow-ball, or 

 syringa, though every suburban home in the land is filled with 

 them. Growing either in crowded clumps, or under trees, or in 

 poor uncultivated sodden soil, we have learned to love them merely 

 for their lavish beauty of bloom, and have not yet learned what 

 breadth and grace of foliage they develop when allowed to spread 

 from the beginning, on an open lawn. 



There are no worse misplantings in most old grounds than old 

 rose-bushes, whose, annual sprouts play hide-and-seek with the 

 rank grass they shelter — roses which the occupants from time im- 

 memorial have remembered gratefully for their June bloom, till 

 their sweetness and beauty have become associated with the 

 tangled grass they grow in. There is no reason for having a lawn 

 broken by such plants. Rose-bushes do better for occasional trans- 

 plantings, and their bloom and foliage is always finer in cultivated, 

 than in grassy ground. Mass therri where they can be cultivated 

 and enriched together. Plate XXXI shows many forms for rose- 

 beds, and by using care in keeping the strongest growers nearest 

 the centre, varieties enough may be displayed in one snug bed to 

 spoil a quarter-acre lawn planted in the old way — " wherever there 

 is a good open space " — precisely the space that should not be 

 broken by anything, least of all by such straggling growers as 



roses. 



Do not be in haste to decide where the shrubs you dig up shall 



