SHELTER AND SHADE 83 



" Sunshine was he 

 In the winter day ; 

 And in the midsummer 

 Coolness and shade." 



That is a beautiful description of a perfect friend, but it 

 might serve equally as a description of a perfect garden. 

 The flowers of July are infinite in their number and 

 exquisite in their beauty, yet, if they are grown in a 

 large, tidy, treeless, shrubless garden, they will yield 

 but little pleasure. A garden is not a place merely for 

 the exhibition of floral wonders, but a place wherein to 

 rest, to talk, to read or to dream. With the blazing 

 sun of July beating on one's unshaded head, dreaming, 

 resting, and reading are equally uncomfortable and 

 unprofitable. 



A shade-giving tree is worth all the flowers of 

 midsummer, though fortunately one is not called upon 

 to sacrifice either. Trees and shrubs yield welcome 

 shade, but, quite apart from this, they help to throw up, 

 and provide suitable backgrounds for, the dwarfer plants 

 which make up the majority of our garden contents. 

 We have been too fond of cutting down trees, and many 

 a suburb has reason to regret the revision of the old 

 forest law of King William : " Gif the forestier or 

 wiridier finds anie man without the principall wode, but 

 sit within the pale, heueand dune ane aik tree, he sould 

 attack him." 



According to our soil and site, must we select the 

 shrubs and trees which will be happiest under the con- 

 ditions we can offer them. When we have ample space, 

 no trees can surpass in beauty our native deciduous trees, 

 such as the oak and hornbeam ; but it is from the smaller 

 trees and larger shrubs that owners of more moderately- 

 sized gardens must chiefly look for shade and back- 

 grounds. Japan has given us many things of infinite 

 value, but few more precious than the white-flowering 



