HOUSE AND GARDEN 
October. 
1910 
215 
In planning to make your garden attractive, in winter as well as in summer, do not overlook the invaluable barberry (Bcrbcris vulgaris) 
nor the Christmas Rose (Helleborus niger), which sends forth its waxen flowers from under the snow 
if its gardener insists upon growing them — in the form of pits 
and outside cellars. What cannot be protected without calling 
attention to its infirmity and thereby spreading an atmosphere 
of gloom over all the landscape that is within view, should be 
taken up and housed. Whatever may be protected by a mulch 
of leaves or straw or sod, or by branches of evergreen, or by 
twining herbaceous vines around or above it, is not a blot on 
the landscape, and may of course, remain. 
With this matter of protection met, through shelters that are 
not an offense to the eye, the question of introducing something 
into the garden that will be a positive feature of winter beauty 
should be considered. There are shrubs innumerable that have 
bright berries and others with beautifully colored bark — and all 
shrubbery is decorative, when well placed, in just the lacy mass 
of its bare branches against the snow, or their warm color against 
the browns of vegetation generally, or against the deep tones of 
evergreens when these form the 
background. Plan an all-the-year- 
round garden when planning—it is 
not difficult — and cheat the winter. 
In a climate where so many months 
are dull and colorless, if not actu¬ 
ally wintry, this is something which 
ought never to be overlooked; it is 
indeed, hardly too much to say 
that winter should have as much 
consideration in the arrangement 
of the garden as summer. 
Masses of Cornus stolonifcra 
give ruddy warmth to the corner 
where they dwell; the Black Alder 
(Ilex verticillata ) holds its bright 
red berries practically all the win¬ 
ter ; Rugosa Roses bear hips as 
large as French chestnuts that are 
a lovely, translucent scarlet - or¬ 
ange ; the purple barberry ( Ber¬ 
ber is vulgaris, purpurea ) is purple 
in branch, leaf and berry; the 
viburnums have fruits that are 
scarlet, blue-black, and pink-and- 
dull-blue, while the old-fashioned 
snowberry and its twin, the Indian 
currant, are familiar to everyone 
with the fat white berries of the first, bunched in odd sizes, offer¬ 
ing a most attractive contrast to the coral of the latter. 
More decorative than all other fruits, perhaps, are the berries 
of the Corky Euonymus (Euonymus alatus ) and its relatives of 
the spindle tree family. These are contained in a capsule which 
bursts as the fruit ripens, rolling back to show the brighter 
colored, or differently colored seeds within. The capsule is usu¬ 
ally a bright orange-scarlet; the seed itself is black in one variety 
—Euonymous verrucosus —a deeper, brighter red than the cap¬ 
sule in some others, and almost white in another —Euonymus 
Europceus, fructo albo. This last is tree-like, attaining a height 
of fifteen feet sometimes. 
Austrian Pine, hemlock and White Fir are evergreens that 
are respectively a bright green, a dark green and a blue green; 
the hemlock is a towering tree fifty feet in height, or it may 
be sheared and kept at any desired height in a hedge. For a 
protection that shall not be so 
dense—and too dense a shelter is 
not always well, for reasons which 
are given below—the privet, of 
which ninety per cent, of our 
hedges are now made (Ligustrum 
ovalifolium ) is excellent. This 
holds its leaves nearly all winter 
and grows so twiggy, through re¬ 
peated primings, that it forms an 
impenetrable barrier to animal life 
and likewise to snow and biting 
winds. 
Where frosts are likely to come 
late in the spring or early in the 
fall, a windbreak or shelter that is 
so dense that it does not allow the 
passage of air at all, tends to en¬ 
courage them by keeping the air 
within the space which it encloses, 
still. Still air is, of course, favor¬ 
able to frost. This is the reason 
why privet is better, in some situa¬ 
tions, than a denser hedge which 
excludes all wind. It is a matter 
of tempering the wind, rather than 
shutting it out altogether. 
(Continued on page 246) 
The final test of a garden is its winter appearance. Good 
work will be good all the year whether in the rich 
green of summer or covered by snow 
