FLORA 
AND SYLVA 
Vol. III. No. 29.] 
AUGUST, 
90s 
[Monthly. 
EVIL-DOERS 
It is well to consider the evil done to 
gardens by the presence of shrubs and 
trees having only the quality of quick 
growth. They are what gardeners often 
call " good doers," but they might more 
fitly be classedas "evil-doers," the result 
of their presence being that they often 
injure most things worth cherishing in 
the garden. Weedy evergreens for the 
most part, their final growth shows 
them in quite a different light from what 
they were when first planted, and their 
growth ends by shutting out air and 
beauty from the home landscape— often 
theworstthing that could happen under 
our dull skies. We were reminded of this 
unfortunate fact the other day in passing 
along a railway south of London, where 
one station with awooden fence cutting 
the platform off from a yard near, was 
covered with yellow tea and other roses 
— a true picture of rose-time. At the 
next station,exactlysimilaras to position 
and soil, there was a Privet hedge against 
the wooden fence, the result a few miser- 
able flowers at its foot. A better illustra- 
tion could not be given of the effect on 
flowers of the use of one evil-doer, the 
rapid-growing Privet. After all the 
growth is not so very much more rapid 
than other things that are really worth 
having. Suppose one were to plant a 
holly hedge in good soil and use healthy 
seedling plants, the growth would be 
rapid and in the one case we have a hedge 
worth looking at, and in the other some- 
thing worse than a weed ; because the 
Privet is nauseating in odour when in 
flower, apart from its absence of char- 
acter or beauty. 
Cutting down to hard ugly lines is 
one result of the use of these fast-grow- 
ing weedy evergreens, for where they 
push over paths as they commonly do 
in most country places, people have not 
the courage to cut them right out but 
trim them back to a hard line. Where 
they obscure the view into a beautiful 
woodland the result is the same — ugli- 
ness and wasted labour— while they 
cumber the ground which should be 
given to the beautiful flowering shrubs 
and trees which come to us in increas- 
ing numbers year by year, and in many 
places are ill-grown or absent when Pri- 
vet, False- Laurel s,and/'^?;///c//;;^ abound. 
Although most of the shrubs we see in 
this way are quick-growing evergreens, 
variegated ones are often called in to 
help, and among them the variegated 
Privet. At the Horticultural Society's 
