July, i o i 6 
35 
Low growing evergreens as a foundation planting give year-round comfort and cheer 
NEXT TO DOGS AND APPLE TREES 
You Should Have the Companionable Evergree n—W hat and How to Plant 
for Permanency and Warmth 
D. R. EDSON 
I T is a fact worthy of realization that 
while we make progress in the develop¬ 
ment of many of the things which go 
to the beautifying of our homes, and in 
others styles continually change, there are 
a few things with which Nature has done 
so well at the beginning that Man, in his 
piecemeal and picayune attempts at per¬ 
fecting the world, has reverently kept his 
theoretical lips closed and his hands off. 
Who can look at a new rose or a new 
tulip and feel sure that the form and the 
texture and the color are so perfect that 
the next International Flower Show will 
not produce something he will admire still 
more? But when you place your hand on 
the deeply creviced bark of a giant pine 
—after admiring it in silence as you ap¬ 
proached from afar, wondering, if you are 
not something of a Universalist, how blind 
Nature could have conceived and executed 
so perfect a creation of art—-you know 
that no new “variety” could ever stir you 
more profoundly. The mere thought of 
pulling out your note-book for the purpose 
of making such a memorandum as “Pinus 
Strobus —perfectly hardy—fine for wind¬ 
breaks or cathedral-like avenues—magnifi¬ 
cent single specimens — quick growing 
screens” is the step that carries one over the 
precipice from the sublime to the ridiculous. 
And so it is with the graceful, tented 
hemlock, and the stalwart, aspiring spruce. 
Common, all of them, to our childhood 
memories, and to the subconscious race 
memories which move us like forgotten 
melodies, as are friendly apple trees and 
faithful dogs: so common that in these days 
of novelty seeking they are not infrequently 
ignored for the sake of more costly ever¬ 
greens of less intrinsic value. But do not 
let your prejudice against the common 
cheat you out of the most permanent and 
the most satisfaction-giving part of your 
evergreen planting. Place for the dwarf 
evergreens and the newer ones there is: it 
is a mistaken sense of artistry and a nar¬ 
row spirit of provincial patriotism which 
would exclude from your planting those 
things which are not “native;” or which 
have been developed with the patient skill 
of the nurseryman, who is inside an artist, 
though his fingers may run to knuckles 
rather than to tapering ends; or have been 
brought by explorers, after years of search 
and unsurpassed hardships, from the 
mountainsides and the valleys of scarcely 
known “interiors” beyond the seas. But 
do not use these things to the exclusion 
of the former. Plant generously of the 
old, reliable, everyday things which will 
still be growing toward their prime when 
your grandchildren are “playing house” 
under their sheltering lower boughs; then 
your landscaping will be as a house founded 
upon a rock, not as a bungalow budded 
upon the sand. 
So much for the frame of mind in which 
it may be well for you to go about plan¬ 
ning your evergreen planting. Do not 
leave it to your nurseryman, nor wholly 
to your landscape architect—if you are so 
unfortunately fortunate as to have the ser¬ 
vices of one—as to what you shall plant 
and where you shall put it. If you can 
have the planting done professionally so 
much the better, provided the professional 
really knows his business. But do not be 
afraid to use your own ideas in the ar¬ 
rangement. After all, you will probably 
have to live with the result for a lifetime, 
while he will be making other stereotyped 
plantings within the week. 
Yet do not try to be original merely to 
be original. Study carefully the effects, 
the groupings, the combinations, and the 
methods of using different varieties of 
