EMBELLISHMENT OF SHRUBBERY BORDERS. 1138 
hill copse, or as the box bushes sometimes do on a Sussex 
down. Here care, variety in selection, taste and skill in 
grouping, so as to allow different subjects, whether placed 
singly or in groups, or little groves, being in a position where 
they may grow well and be seen to advantage, would lead 
to the most charming results in the open-air garden. With 
sufficient preparation at first, such shrubberies would be the 
cause of very little trouble afterwards. 
Now, such beauty could be obtained without any further 
aid from other plants; and in many cases it might be desir- 
able to consider the trees and shrubs and their effect only, 
and let the turf spread in among them; but we have the 
privilege of adding to this beautiful tree and shrub life 
another world of beauty—the bulbs and herbaceous plants, 
and innumerable beautiful things which go to form the 
ground flora, so to say, of northern and temperate countries, 
and which light up the world with loveliness in meadow 
or copse, or wood or alpine pasture in the flowering season. 
The surface which is dug and wasted in all our parks, and 
in numbers of our gardens, should be occupied with this 
varied life; not in the miserable old mixed border fashion, 
with each plant stuck up with a stick, but with the plants in 
groups and colonies between the shrubs. In the spaces where 
turf would not thrive, or where it might be troublesome to 
keep fresh, we should have irises, or narcissi, or lupines, or 
French willows, or Japan anemones, or any of scores of other 
lovely things which people cannot now find a place for in our 
stiff gardens. The soil which now does little work, and in 
which the tree-roots every year are mercilessly dug up, 
would support myriads of lovely plants. The necessity of 
I 
