CHAPTER X 
FLOWERING TREES AND SHRUBS 
THE majority of English gardeners are slow to recognise 
the value of the various flowering shrubs as an aid to 
the carrying out of design. Our gardens, as a whole, 
are far too sombre, a result of planting extensively with 
dark, close growing evergreens, which keep out the 
light, and reduce our pleasure grounds to the verge of 
monotony. Evergreens are well enough in their way, 
and in certain instances form valuable screens to unsightly 
corners at all times of the year. But their use has been 
overdone, and by their presence they are crowding out 
a host of beautiful subjects, graceful and varied in their 
mode of growth, and productive, also, of that most 
needed element in our often saddening atmosphere— 
colour. Small gardens, especially, can ill afford to be 
overplanted with laurel and privet, a form of encroach- 
ment to which they are particularly liable. The majority 
of evergreens are greedy feeders, and their hungry roots 
travel in all directions, impoverishing the soil in the beds 
and borders, which, owing to lack of space, have to be 
formed in their near vicinity. The prejudice which exists 
against deciduous trees is in reality quite unfounded, as 
anyone must realise who has taken the trouble to examine 
the structural beauty of trees which shed their leaves. 
The exquisite tints of autumn, the gradual revealing of 
hidden beauties in bark and stem as the summer mantle 
is discarded, are sights we look for in vain in evergreens. 
Summer and winter they hardly vary, and gardens in 
74 
