CHAPTER  VII
 

                   Arrangement of  Shrubberies.



It is upon the size, number, and arrangement of the trees and shrubs in

a garden that its broad effects depend.   Diversities  in the surface of the

land, its eminences and  declivities, provide the most effective variations

of scenery; but where these are non-existent,  and the  lie of the land is

flat,  the trees  then become the most  important  elements  in  providing

variety of outlook and diversity of background.  If the  trees and shrubs

are not themselves the chief objects of interest in a garden,  they must, in

all but the smallest areas, form at the  least the setting of whatever else

the garden may contain.   Whatever the picture may be, it is the arboreal

vegetation that makes the framing.  This being so, it is strange that in so

many gardens one should see such striking evidence of no special  thought

or care for the trees and  shrubs they contain.   How often one sees, more

especially in the case of shrubs,  that there has been  no endeavour to

secure the most suitable and beautiful kinds, or any attempt to draw upon

that wealth  of material which the enterprise,  exploration, and  gardening

skill of the last fifty years have made available.

   Who is not familiar with that depressing thing known as  the  "mixed

shrubbery"—a crowded  mass of shrubs, with  here and  there  perhaps a

tree, whence all  the  weaker sorts have disappeared, and in which the

stronger-ones are left to fight each other for light and space ? The result

is that what  remains is a survival perhaps of the fittest, but certainly not

the most beautiful, and is often merely a jumble of laurels, privets, Pontic

rhododendrons, weedy lilacs, coarse spiraeas, and the like.  If it were not

that  such shrubberies  may be seen any day  of one's life in process of

development, we  might hope that so many object-lessons would, before

now, have brought about their end.

   It  is  easy  to  trace  their  origin and development.  A  student  of

human  nature would  probably  say that this sort of " mixed shrubbery"

is  only  one more evidence of  the  evils of  procrastination.  At  the

commencement, the  plants are  naturally  small,  and in  the hope  of

producing an immediate effect they are put  in rather closely together.

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