68 
House & Garden 
THE EVOLUTION of a SHRUB PLANTING 
Showing the Ingredients that Go Into a Shrubbery Border and 
the Methods that Make it a Beautiful and Effective Screen 
ELIZABETH LEONARD STRANG 
W hat does the landscape architect 
think about when he makes a plant¬ 
ing plan? By what process does he evolve 
something of lasting beauty from a seem¬ 
ingly hit-or-miss collection of plants which 
he has decided will meet the needs of the 
problem ? 
First, he must consider the site. Two 
places might be similar in shape and size 
but utterly different in the selection and 
disposition of the planting material. Cli¬ 
mate, relative scale, the character of the 
immediate surroundings, the degree of re¬ 
finement, the amount of care the place will 
receive—groomed to the last degree or al¬ 
lowed to grow as Nature wills—these are 
only a few of the essential elements of a 
successfully built-up planting. 
The accompanying plan shows what was 
accomplished on a village lot. The house, 
overhung as it was by large shade trees 
was so dignified that the foundation em¬ 
bellishments often advocated by disciples 
of the landscape art would have been 
utterly trivial. Since the owners did not 
wish anything costly to prepare or main¬ 
tain, the problem, reduced to its lowest 
terms, resolved itself into a border of trees 
and shrubs on the far side of the lawn, 
which, though primarily for screening pur¬ 
poses, should possess beauty and interest 
the year through, and, accessory to this, 
a few well-chosen and carefully-disposed 
plants and vines with a perennial border 
along one side of the house. 
As this border was viewed at a con¬ 
siderable distance from the house, the 
planting could be fairly large in scale. 
Intimate detail and choice bits of expensive 
planting, such as would have been appre¬ 
ciated on a more restricted area, would 
have been utterly wasted here. By keep¬ 
ing to a relatively simple treatment the 
double purposes of economy and good de¬ 
sign were served. 
In beginning, to make the plan, some 
things of rapid growth were first put 
down—a row of Lombardy poplars next 
the fence (to be cut out later) concealed 
the adjoining old barn the very first 
season, and the glossy laurel-leaved wil¬ 
lows are attractive enough to be left until 
they begin to crowd. A group of the large- 
leaved ailanthus trees, placed where the 
owner intends ultimately to build a ga¬ 
rage, will occasion less regret than would 
a choicer tree when the time arrives to cut. 
These preliminaries having been dis¬ 
posed of, the next step in the evolution of 
the design was so to arrange a number of 
hemlock trees that as they grow they will 
form a dense screen, contribute to a well- 
balanced winter effect and tie together the 
lesser units of the composition. (These 
trees have proved a practical choice for 
this locality, inasmuch as they may be 
successfully taken from the v 7 oods, even 
when quite large, if moved at precisely the 
right season, namely the last week in Au¬ 
gust and the first in September). 
To avoid spottiness in a landscape pic¬ 
ture we are told to plant in broad masses, 
low or high as required, each variety in a 
group by itself. If this advice is followed 
literally, the painful result is a series of 
solid clumps, anything but nature-like in 
appearance. The scattered hemlocks break 
up the lumpiness of the minor masses, 
and provide a unifying background for the 
lesser effects as they appear in their 
allotted sequence. They are aided by the 
woodsy twigginess of the shapely little 
blue-berried dogwood trees. Blended to¬ 
gether by means of this background, the 
many varieties necessary to the various 
pictures may be arranged without con¬ 
fusion. 
First, in early spring, v y e see against the 
tender vivid green of young larch foliage, 
red maple blossoms, white sprays of shad- 
bush, pussy willow, and the misty yellow 
of spice-bush and cornus mascula, while 
in the foreground blazes the scarlet 
(Continued on page 88) 
T he successful 
shrubbery 
planting, as 
here, fits snug- 
l y into the 
slopes and out- 
lines of the 
l aw 7i and 
serves as a 
b a ckgr o und 
and as a fttask 
