CHAPTER XI 



WOOD AND SHRUBBERY EDGES 



Opportunities for good gardening are so often over- 

 looked that it may be well to draw attention to some 

 of those that are most commonly neglected. 



When woodland joins garden ground there is too 

 often a sudden jolt ; the wood ends with a hard line, 

 sometimes with a path along it, accentuating the defect. 

 When the wood is of Scotch Fir of some age there is a 

 monotonous emptiness of naked trunk and bare groimd. 

 In wild moorland this is characteristic and has its own 

 beauty ; it may even pleasantly accompany the garden 

 when there is only a view into it here and there ; but 

 when the path passes along, furlong after furlong, with 

 no attempt to bring the wood into harmony with the 

 garden, then the monotony becomes oppressive and 

 the sudden jolt is unpleasantly perceived. There is 

 the well-stocked garden and there is the hollow wood 

 with no cohesion between the two — no sort of effort to 

 make them join hands. 



It would have been better if from the first the garden 

 had not been brought quite so close to the wood, then 

 the space between, anything from twenty-five to forty 

 feet, might have been planted so as to bring them into 

 unison. In such a case the path would go, not next 



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