Later still, and in the sunny days, would come the various beautiful everlasting peas, various plants of the Mallow tribe, the Poke Weeds, broad–leaved Sea Lavender, and other vigorous kinds, the Globe Thistles, Acanthuses, the free–flowering Yuccas, such as Y. flaccida and Y. filamentosa, the common Artichoke, with its noble flowers; and in autumn, a host of the Golden Rods and Michaelmas Daisies. These are so common in America that adding them to the wild garden would probably be considered a needless labour; but the substitution of the various really beautiful species of aster for those commonly found and of inferior beauty would well repay. In case it were thought desirable in making a wild garden in a shady position to grow plants that do not attain perfection in such positions, they might be grown in the more open parts at hand, and sufficiently near to be seen in the picture.
CHAPTER XIII.
A PLAN FOR THE EMBELLISHMENT OF THE SHRUBBERY BORDERS IN LONDON PARKS.
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Dug and mutilated Shrubbery in St. James’s Park. Sketched in winter of 1879.
In the winter season, or indeed at any other season, one of the most melancholy things to be seen in our parks and gardens are the long, bare, naked shrubberies, extending, as along the Bayswater Road, more or less for a mile in a place; the soil greasy, black, seamed with the mutilated roots of the poor shrubs and trees; which are none the better, but very much the worse, for the cruel annual attention of digging up their young roots without returning any adequate nourishment or good to the soil. Culturally, the whole thing is suicidal, both for trees and plants. The mere fact of men having to pass through one of those shrubberies every autumn, and, as they fancy, “prune” and otherwise attend to unfortunate shrubs and low trees, leads to this, and especially to the shrubs taking the appearance of inverted besoms. Thus a double wrong is done, and at great waste of labour. Any interesting life that might be in the ground is destroyed, and the whole appearance of the shrubbery is made hideous from the point of view of art; all good culture of flowering or evergreen shrubs destroyed or made impossible. This system is an orthodox one, that has descended to us from other days, the popular idea being that the right thing to do in autumn is to dig the shrubbery. The total abolition of this system, and the adoption of the one to be presently described, would lead to the happiest revolution ever effected in gardening, and be a perfectly easy, practicable means for the abolition of the inverted besoms, and the choke–muddle shrubbery, and these awful wastes of black soil and mutilated roots.