when planted between evergreens, with other bright-colored shrubs in the
foreground.

There are many shrubs whose berries are blue, and purple, and black.
While these are not as showy as those of scarlet and white, they are
very attractive, and can be made extremely useful in the winter garden.
They should not be neglected, because they widen the range of color to
such an extent that the charge of monotony of tone in the winter
landscape is ineffective.

The Ramanas Rose (R. _lucida_) has very brilliant clusters of crimson
fruit which retains its beauty long after the holidays. This shrub is
really more attractive in winter than in summer.

It will be understood, from what I said at the beginning of this
chapter, that I put high value on the decorative effect of leafless
shrubs. Their branches, whether traced against a background of sky or
snow, make an embroidery that has about it a charm that summer cannot
equal in delicacy. A Bittersweet, clambering over bush or tree, and
displaying its many clusters of red and orange against a background of
leafless branches, with the intense blue of winter sky showing through
them, makes a picture that is brilliant in the extreme, when you
consider the relative values of the colors composing it. Then you will
discover that the charm is not confined to the color of the fruit, but
to the delicate tracery of branch and twig, as well.

WINDOW AND VERANDA BOXES

Somebody had a bright thought when the window-box came into existence.
The only wonder is that persons who were obliged to forego the pleasure
of a garden did not think it out long ago. It is one of the
"institutions" that have come to stay. We see more of them every year.
Those who have gardens--or could have them, if they wanted them--seem to
have a decided preference for the window-box substitute.

There is a good reason for this: The window-box brings the garden to
one's room, while the garden obliges one to make it a visit in order to
enjoy the beauty in it. With the window-box the upstair room can be made
as pleasant as those below, and the woman in the kitchen can enjoy the
companionship of flowers while she busies herself with her housewifely
duties, if she does not care to make herself a back-yard garden such as
I have spoken of in a preceding chapter. And the humble home that has
no room for flowers outside its walls, the homes in the congested city,
away up, up, up above the soil in which a few flowers