Where there are wide lawn spaces and fine trees in garden ground much of the effect is often lost or spoiled by the presence of unworthy trivialities where there should be distinct and bold features. The most frequent offender is a narrow strip of flower border, edging shrubbery and coming between the shrubs and the grass. Nothing is more useless than such a border. The shrubs would look much better coming right down to the grass, while if bright or distinct colour is absolutely required, it is easy to make a place here and there where some patch of Lily or other flower of bold form may be well seen.
These narrow borders are undesirable, not only for their poor effect—we think not of one, but of many a fine place where there are furlongs of such futility—but because the plan is destructive to both shrubs and flowers. If the ground is not dug for a year the roots of the shrubs invade it; if it is dug and enriched for the flowers, the feeding roots of the shrubs are mutilated.
In the case of a place where lawn comes up to shrub plantation, which, again, is backed by woodland, the better way is to have, in just the right places, a bold planting of something fairly large, whose flower shall endure for a good while, to let the large group of it come right through to the lawn, and also stretch away back into the woodland. In our southern counties, in sheltered places, where the ground is cool and moist, and at the same time well drained, nothing can be better than Hydrangeas. Other softer plants for the same treatment would be the fine Nicotiana sylvestris, and for earlier in the year White Foxglove, and even before that Verbascum olympicum. Lilium auratum is also superb in such places, and Polygonum Sieboldi and others of this fine race of autumn-blooming plants. If some of the shrubs at the edge of the grass, such as Azaleas, have beautiful colour at more than one time of the year, both at the flowering time and in autumn blaze of foliage, two seasons of beauty are secured.
Hardy Ferns are undeservedly neglected as plants to group about the feet of shrubs; some of the bolder kinds, as the Male Fern and the Lady Fern, are charming as a setting to the Lilies that love cool, shady wood edges.
TALL EVERGREEN SHRUBS IN A FLOWER BORDER.
If shrubbery edges were planned with a view to good effect both far and near, what capital companies of plants could be put together. As one such example, let us suppose a cool spot, with peaty or light vegetable soil, planted in the front with Skimmia and hardy Ferns, Funkia grandiflora, and Lilium rubellum. A little farther back would come Lilium Brownii, then a group of Kalmias and Lilium auratum. One carefully-planted scheme such as this would lead to others of the same class, so that the quantities of grand shrubs and plants that are only waiting to be well used would be made into lovely pictures, instead of being planted in the usual unthinking fashion, which is without definite aim, and therefore cannot possibly make any good effect.
We do not, as a rule, plant upright-growing Conifers of the Juniper and Cypress class in our flower borders, and yet the illustration shows how this may be done with the very happiest effect. Probably in this case the trees were there already, and the flower border was wanted, and therefore was made in circumstances that would not have been specially arranged at the outset. But it has been done with rare intelligence and sympathy, and the result is excellent. Here also is seen the best kind of edge treatment, for the grass is either cut with the scythe or the plants at the edge are lifted with a stick as the machine runs along, so that the usual pitiless machine edge is not seen, and the plants at the side bush out over the grass just as they should do. This is a thing that is rarely seen well done in gardens.