Hydrangea paniculata grandiflora
August twenty-sixth
Japanese Barberry, a dwarf shrub, covered in autumn with scarlet berries which remain on the bush all winter, is very ornamental. Many of us remember Calycanthus floridus, or the Sweet-scented Shrub of our young days, when the children would tie two or three of the queer brown blossoms in the corner of a handkerchief to regale their less fortunate companions with a sniff of the delicious odor. Forsythia and Laburnum, or Golden Chain, both have yellow blossoms. Others are, Weigela Rosea, the well-known pink-flowering shrub; Rhus Cotinus, or Purple Fringe, and Cydonia Japonica, or Japanese Quince, deep rose-pink, flowering early in the spring.
These all yield beautiful flowers, beside being hardy and of rapid growth.
All shrubs should be trimmed as soon as they have finished flowering, but only enough to prevent their becoming spindling, with the exception of Hydrangea grandiflora, which should be trimmed back, at least three-quarters of the new growth, every year.
It is important, also, to thin out the old wood of most shrubs after five or six years.
Shrubs can be grown from cuttings if one has patience to wait for the result. But as it takes from three to four years’ time and considerable care to grow a shrub that would cost but twenty cents, for which price many varieties of shrubs can be bought, few people care to raise them.
On a large place it might be worth while to raise shrubs from cuttings. And where there is plenty of space, a small nursery of them might be kept.