OF SHRUBS AND THEIR PLACING 5 



rock-garden. If your space is small, exclude them alto- 

 gether, would be my precept ; otherwise a bank of 

 Japanese Maples may be allowed in the middle distance, 

 but very great care must always be taken, whatever 

 deciduous shrubs you employ, and wherever you plant 

 them, absolutely to ignore them in the permanent scheme 

 of the garden, to place no reliance on them as features 

 in the design, no matter how lovely they may be while in 

 flower. Nevertheless the fact of their loveliness in flower 

 introduces a complicating factor. You cannot do with- 

 out them ; and yet, for three-quarters of the year you 

 have to be doing without them. And thus I arrive at 

 my conclusion ; they must be so cunningly placed that 

 while in flower they strike forcibly, proportionately on 

 the eye ; and yet, when out of flower, usurp no prominent 

 place with their barrenness and decay, but fall naturally 

 into the background of the picture. And thus all points 

 in the foreground must be closed against deciduous shrubs. 

 They must alternate, up at the back, with evergreens, so 

 that the fall of their blossom means no loss. And, as 

 salient features in the scheme of the rock-garden, they 

 have no possibilities, and must resolutely be refused. 



There is one exception, though, to this rule. And I 

 make it with reference to a thing which is less a shrub, 

 indeed, than incarnate beauty itself. Paeonia Moutan can 

 never be out of place on the rock-woi'k (granted space, of 

 course). And yet the Tree-Paeony blooms for but a 

 short while, is leggy and gawky through the winter, leaden 

 and dull through the autumn. But, during the flaring 

 hours of its glory, it so holds the garden spellbound that 

 no sacrifice is too heavy to make for its presence. I 

 speak by book. Our masters, the Chinese, allow to 

 Paeonia Moutan a supremacy in the rock-garden which 

 they concede to no other flower. Remember how 

 its beauty is made to crown the horror of that brilliant. 



