AND GROUNDS. 
153 
facing the main entrance steps, we would plant the pendulous 
Abies excelsa inverta ; along the fence towards the 
front, a dense mass of low-growing evergreens j along the fence on 
the other side of the spruce (opposite the bay-window), a hemlock 
hedge, merging as it recedes from the front to the grape-trellis into a 
belt of evergreens. The groups of shrubs indicated in many places 
against the house, must be of the best species, which grow from 
two to seven feet in height ; and ought to embrace in each group 
one or more shrubs with fragrant flowers, so that there shall be no 
summer month when the windows will not be perfumed from them. 
It is becoming a fashion to decry the planting of shrubs in contact 
with dwelling houses. This fashion is a part of an extreme 
reaction that possesses the public mind against the old and un- 
healthy mode of embowering houses so completely under trees, 
and packing yards so densely with shrubs, that many homes were 
made dark and damp enough to induce consumption and other 
diseases ; and physicians have been obliged to protest against 
their injurious effects on the health of the inmates. But low- 
growing shrubs planted against the basement-walls of suburban 
houses, and rising only a few feet higher than the first floor, are 
not open to any such objections. A house that is nested in shrubs 
which seem to spring out of its nooks and corners with some- 
thing of the freedom that characterizes similar vegetation spring- 
ing naturally along stone walls and fences, seems to express the 
mutual recognition and dependence of nature and art ; the 
shrubs loving the warmth of the house-walls, and the house 
glad to be made more charming in the setting of their ver- 
dure and blossoms. Many pleasing shrubs will do well where 
their roots can feel the warmth that foundation-walls retain in 
winter, which will not flourish in open exposed ground. Some will 
do well in shady nooks and northern exposures which cannot be 
grown in sunny projections ; others need all the sun of the latter 
exposures, and are grateful in addition for all the reflected heat 
from the house-walls. The foundations (provided of course that 
they are of a deep and substantial character) thus become protect- 
ing walls that offer to the skillful planter many studies in the 
selection and arrangement of small shrubs. No well-constructed 
