120 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



of course, simply to make a servant and a slave of it ; much more favour 

 must be shown it in order to see it in its beauty and to enjoy its full 

 fragrance. 



Perhaps it is a little difficult to say at which period of the year the 

 mountain ash (Pyrus Aucuparia) is the more beautiful, whether when it is 

 hung with its tawny- white clusters of sweet- smelling flowers, or when 

 its scarlet fruits are mature. The former period in Middlesex is less 

 fleeting than the latter, for the hosts of birds quickly strip off the berries 

 as they ripen, and, much as one may grudge them the feast, there is 

 still the consolation that they are assisting to disseminate and increase 

 a very beautiful form of tree life. 



Amongst the smaller British trees the spindle tree {Euonymus 

 europaeus) and the two Viburnums, the guelder-rose and the wayfaring 

 tree, are most attractive in the shrubbery ; indeed, the first, our only 

 British Euonymus, is deserving of a special bed or clump to itself. 

 Grown in this way it is particularly bright and interesting in the 

 autumn months, when its crimson capsules dehisce and expose the orange- 

 coloured arils of the seeds, a combination of colour reminiscent of the 

 tropical gourd Momnrdica Charantia. 



The wayfaring tree has a more " garden " appearance than those 

 I have previously noted — rigid and prim with its handsome pubescent 

 leaves and white cymes of flowers, followed by black fruits, it stands out 

 in our gardens sturdy and typically British. 



To grow the guelder-rose so as to see it at its best it should be planted 

 near to the water's edge, where in the autumn its red translucent berries 

 (or drupes) give a picturesque effect. A mass of this shrub growing by 

 the old mill stream at Bushey, with the roots dipping in the water, is 

 literally covered in the early autumn with berries, and has afforded 

 a subject for many a wandering artist of the nature-loving type. 



A quaint, attractive, and interesting berry-bearing shrub is the sea 

 buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) , more often seen in seaside gardens 

 and near the coast than in inland gardens. Grown in a group, the colour 

 contrast between the clusters of orange berries and the silvery foliage 

 always commands attention. Away from Cromer, the finest example that 

 I know of this desirable British shrub is in the Aldenham House collection, 

 where Mr. Beckett has given the species the position its merits entitle 

 it to. 



Any reference to British shrubs without mention of the gorse and 

 broom would be incomplete. A writer in the " Times " recently described 

 these two shrubs as the most splendid of shrubs, British or exotic. This, 

 of course, is high praise ; but all who have seen the sheets of golden colour 

 (and who has not ?) lighting up some wide expanse of common or moor- 

 land, or some tall cliff, will, I think, agree ; and I would only add that with 

 them should be bracketed the dwarf whin (Ulex nanus), a species that 

 flowers later, and thus keeps up until quite the end of the summer the 

 glory of the better-known U. europaeus. 



There are not only trees and shrubs but many other British plants 

 that one expects to see in any well-ordered garden, though one does not 

 at first associate them with British wild flowers. What garden having 

 any pretence to the name would be without snowdrops and Lent lilies, 



