THINGS WORTH DOING 283 



and Virginia Creeper. For my own part, I wisli I 

 had more of such places in order to have a wider 

 scope for such plantings ; while in other gardens I 

 groan in spirit to see the many opportunities wasted, 

 and unsightliness reigning supreme where there might 

 be pictures of delightful beauty. And to get into 

 the habit of considering and composing such arrange- 

 ments, and to worry out the way of doing them, is 

 by no means one of the least of the pleasures of a 

 garden. 



All sorts of pleasant things may be done by 

 training down shrubs like Laburnums ; I regret that 

 I have no place to make a Laburnum hedge, planting 

 them about three feet apart and arching them over 

 one after the other and fastening the head of each 

 to the arched back of the next. Often one can alter 

 the place of a young tree a few feet by bending its 

 head down gradually till it touches the ground, and 

 then pegging it underground till it roots and the old 

 stem can be cut away. I am doing nearly the same 

 thing to some young Scotch Firs (bad to transplant) 

 that are a few feet too near a path. But in this case 

 they will not be rooted at the heads, only gradually 

 drawn do\ni and the head fixed firmly to the ground 

 or near it. In time it will rise and form a tree at 

 that place, and the original stem, lying along the 

 ground, will be so well covered with Heath and 

 Bracken and Moss that in a few years no one would 

 know where the root really was. I planted a few 



