SHRUB AND FLOWER BORDERS
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.
[Illustration: _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.