WHAT MAY BE DONE TO BEAUTIFY YOUR GROUNDS BY THE JUDICIOUS USE OF 
WELL SELECTED SHRUBBERY—THE BEST EVERGREEN AND DECIDUOUS SORTS 
by F. F. Rockwell 
Photographs by Nathan R. Graves and Others 
I T is difficult to account for the 
slowness with which people ac¬ 
cept the fact that shrubs are available 
for the many as well as for the few; 
that they are not only universally ad¬ 
mired, but should be universally pos¬ 
sessed. Of course there is a reason, 
probably there are several reasons for 
it, and I think one would not be far 
wrong in putting the biggest reason 
down as this: we have been a nation 
of retail buyers, and suspicious of get¬ 
ting anything without first seeing it or 
of ordering from distant firms. If it 
had been possible for the local retail 
florist or seedsman to carry as com¬ 
plete a line of shrubs as he did of 
flowers or seeds, there is little doubt 
that there would not be so many places 
barren of the beauty which well se¬ 
lected shrubbery would surely add to 
their appearance. 
Again, there seems to be a wide¬ 
spread misconception as to the cost of 
shrubs. People seem to have formed 
the idea — largely from traveling nurs¬ 
ery agents, I presume — that shrubs 
are quite expensive. They will not 
realize that many of the best sorts may 
be had for twenty-five cents apiece, for first class specimens, yet 
such is the case. And when you stop to consider that a hardy 
shrub stays on from year to year, increasing in size and beauty, 
and requiring practically no care, it 
must be admitted that they are about 
the least expensive sort of flowering 
or decorative plant that there is. 
Not only are shrubs inexpensive 
and not insistent about care, but they 
do well, for the most part, on almost 
any soil one is likely to encounter. 
Furthermore, they offer an almost un¬ 
limited variety of colors and of form, 
both in shape and height, so that they 
are adaptable to the widest sort of a 
range of duties, from a flowering bed 
to a screen for a large out-building, 
and from the densest mass effects to 
single effective specimens on the lawn. 
Have you realized these things be¬ 
fore? And does your place possess 
its quota of these permanently beauti¬ 
ful and perfectly available plants? 
The one object in using shrubs, of 
course, is to make the place more 
beautiful, but there are, in general, 
three ways of using them toward 
this end. As a background for lower 
growing plants, flower beds, or lawns; 
for hedges, boundary-lines, or screens, 
and for the beauty of their flowers or 
foliage, berries, or bark, either in beds 
or as individual specimens. Of course these three uses are seldom 
distinct and separate — which only illustrates further the many- 
sided advantages of shrub plantings. 
Among the evergreen shrubs the mountain laurel has 
richness of foliage and bloom alike 
(290) 
