422 



MY GARDEN. 



I have at least fifty trees. When planted beside a bright scarlet 

 thorn and a Guelder rose, the combination— especially if conjoined 

 with the flower of the medlar— is marvellous to behold. I have such a 

 group on my swan island ; and when the season is favourable, and all 

 the trees blossom at the same time, the effect is more easily imagined 

 than described. 



There are two kinds, the Cytisus Laburnum and the C. L. alpinum, 

 the English and Scotch laburnums; the latter flowering later than 

 the former, and thus prolonging the laburnum blossoming season. 

 The one known as Waterer's variety has blossoms a foot and a half 

 long (fig. 948) ; of this I have one tree. The laburnum is a strikingly 



beautiful object in the Tete Noir Pass in 

 Switzerland, where I have seen it in flower 

 in June. In Scotland it is common. Though 

 our gardens are usually ornamented with its 

 brilliant pendent blossom, yet in some years 



Fig. 948. — Laburnum Blossom. 



Fig, 949. — Arbutus unedo. 



Fig. 949 a,. — Maidenhair Tree. 



the flower-buds are frozen by a late spring frost, and in that case the 

 trees give little, and occasionally no blossom, and my garden is then 

 deprived of one of its greatest charms. The trees are readily raised 

 from the black seeds, which children are sometimes prone to eat, to 

 their own destruction, as they are intensely poisonous. 



A lovely evergreen tree, Arbutus unedo (fig. 949), which grows 

 naturally in Ireland, and which produces fruit resembling strawberries, 

 succeeds well near London, but does not prosper in my garden, on 

 account of the frost severely injuring it. 



