PLANTING FOR WINTER COLOUR 143 



It will also be well, instead of planting them exclu- 

 sively sort by sort, to group and intergroup care- 

 fully assorted colours, such as the scarlet Willow with 

 the purple-barked kind, and to let this pass into the 

 American Willow with the black stem. Such a group 

 should not be too large, and it should be near the 

 pathway, for it will show best near at hand. For the 

 sake of the bark-colouring, it would be best to cut it 

 all every year, although in the larger plantings it is 

 desirable to have the trees of different ages, or the 

 effect may be too much that of a mere crop instead 

 of a well-arranged garden grouping. 



Some of the garden Roses, both of the free-growing 

 and bush kinds, have finely coloured bark that can 

 be used in much the same way. They are specially 

 good in broken ground, such as the banks of an old 

 hollow cart-way converted to garden use, or the sloping 

 debris of a quarry. Of the free kinds, the best coloured 

 are Rosa ferruginea, whose leaves are red as well as the 

 stem — it is the Rosa rubrifolia of nurseries — and the 

 varieties of Boursault RoSes, derived from Rosa alpina. 

 As bushes for giving reddish colouring, Rosa lucida 

 would be among the best. 



By waterside the Great Reedmace — commonly but 

 wrongly called Bulrush — holds its handsome seed- 

 heads nearly through the winter, and beds of the 

 Common Reed [Arundo Phragmites) stand up the winter 

 through in masses of light, warm colouring that are 

 grateful to the eye and suggest comfortable harbourage 

 for wildfowl. 



Some shrubs have conspicuously green bark, such 



