7 
SHRUBBERIES— (ViNCA minor). 
There is a class of persons whose attachment to ornamental gardening deserves 
the utmost degree of pleasure which it can afford, but who, from the restrictions 
of a limited income, or want of time, cannot keep their borders, plots, or shrub- 
beries, in a high state of order. Sometimes, indeed, a man becomes possessed of a 
garden so laid out that its arrangement cannot be conveniently altered ; all he has 
to do therefore is to make the best of his pleasure-ground, and to turn it to the 
utmost account. 
We will presume that a sweeping narrow lawn is in front of a cottage, or neat 
country villa ; its figure is irregular, and its extreme verge — the one most remote 
from the dwelling — bounded by a laurel hedge, and an irregular border ; in parts 
very narrow, in others swelling to a plot of considerable extent — the whole, how- 
ever, planted with evergreen and flowering shrubs. Now, all this, if well arranged, 
is extremely pretty and rural ; but it is in vain to attempt the proper cultivation 
of flowers, annual or herbaceous, among shrubs, unless a few primroses, violets, 
hepaticas, and the like, be excepted. While the shrubs are young and small, the 
surface soil may be kept in neat and trim condition by the Dutch hoe ; but time 
goes on, the shrubs become large ; digging or hoeing is with difficulty efi*ected ; 
the surface becomes neglected, and dank grasses, or ugly mosses, disfigure that 
department which of all others is the most beautiful, if its order and keeping be 
thoroughly maintained. Every one who possesses a numerous acquaintance, and 
is in the habit of seeing many gardens, must be sure that the above picture is not 
overdrawn. To a country person who is his own gardener, and whose time is 
quite occupied, we would with all deference suggest the following hints — 
Let the surface be entirely covered with some permanent evergreen of humble 
growth : common ivy will do very well, but we have selected a plant which 
greatly surpasses it. About the end of October, or in the middle of February, 
as the case may be, after trimming and pruning the shrubs, and bringing the 
plantation to an orderly condition, let the soil be dressed (if the material can be 
procured) with half-reduced screenings of leaves from forcing-houses, or with the 
earth of garden weeds, mixed some weeks before with about a quart of salt to the 
barrow-load, to prevent the germination of seeds. In default of these, any 
decayed littery manure, or old sawdust with sand, and some soot, will do. Three 
inches of some such dress forked into the soil will prepare it to receive a root of 
Vinca minor ^ the lesser periwinkle, in every convenient space between shrub and 
shrub. The plants will rarely fail to adapt themselves to the soil ; and as the 
trailing shoots extend, roots will be developed at the joints, and thus the entire 
surface will become covered with a mass of never-fading verdure. 
Vinca minor is a native of England ; its botanical characters, according to the 
