CHAPTER XL 
TI1E AMERICAN GARDEN. 
The money spent on rhododendrons during twenty years in 
this country would nearly suffice to pay off the National Debt. 
If the reader fails to apprehend the force of this remark, its 
meaning may be reached through an inspection of all the 
villa gardens of the country. In these villa gardens, that is 
to say in a considerable proportion of them, will be found 
numbers of perishing rhododendrons inhabiting common 
borders, and associated with laurels, aucubas, hollies, and 
such like; all these other inmates of the borders being 
perhaps in a thriving state, while the rhododendrons are 
going, going, from their pristine buxom beauty to a condition 
of shrunken starvedness that tells to sage beholders that their 
death is near. The very bad practice of planting standard 
roses on grass turf has its parallel in the equally bad practice 
of planting rhododendrons in the common border, where, 
unless by some peculiar accident the soil happens to suit 
them, they must die, and in the process of dying become 
hideous long-armed things that no one would wish to save. 
It is a most important part of our business to warn the reader 
against waste of money, and time, and hope, in ill-advised 
adventures in the garden. We therefore protest against the 
wasteful and ridiculous practice of treating the rhododendron 
as adapted for any and every position in which a handsome 
evergreen shrub may be required. No matter how cheap, 
how common, or how hardy, this noble plant is peculiar in its 
requirements, and must be humoured, or it will dwindle and 
die. Deal with it aright, and it grows rapidly, flowers freely, 
and becomes one of the grandest ornaments of the garden ; 
but begin with it in the wrong way, and it can only serve ao an 
evidence that somebody near at hand is not yet quite accom¬ 
plished in the art of gardening. 
