the little hints and suggestions along these lines
in the cultivation of all kinds of plants.

Among our best large shrubs, suitable for planting at the rear of the
lot, or in the back row of a group, is the Lilac. The leading varieties
will grow to a height of ten or twelve feet, and can be made to take on
bush form if desired, or can be trained as a small tree. If the bush
form is preferred, cut off the top of the plant, when small, and allow
several branches to start from its base. If you prefer a tree, keep the
plant to one straight stem until it reaches the height where you want
the head to form. Then cut off its top. Branches will start below. Leave
only those near the top of the stem. These will develop and form the
head you want. I consider the Lilac one of our very best shrubs, because
of its entire hardiness, its rapid development, its early flowering
habit, its beauty, its fragrance, and the little attention needed by it.
Keep the soil about it rich, and mow off the suckers that will spring up
about the parent plant in great numbers each season, and it will ask no
more of you. The chief objection urged against it is its tendency to
sucker so freely. If let alone, it will soon become a nuisance, but with
a little attention this disagreeable habit can be overcome. I keep the
ground about my plants free from suckers by the use of the lawn-mower.
They can be cut as easily as grass when young and small.

[Illustration: SNOWBALL]

If there is a more beautiful shrub than the white Lilac I do not know
what it is. For cut-flower work it is as desirable as the Lily of the
Valley, which is the only flower I can compare it with in delicate
beauty, purity, and sweetness.

The Persian is very pleasing for front positions, because of its
compact, spreading habit, and its slender, graceful manner of branching
close to the ground. It is a very free bloomer, and a bush five or six
feet high, and as many feet across, will often have hundreds of
plume-like tufts of bloom, of a dark purple showing a decided violet
tint.

The double varieties are lovely beyond description. At a little distance
the difference between the doubles and singles will not be very
noticeable, but at close range the beauty of the former will be
apparent. Their extra petals give them an airy grace, a feathery
lightness, which the shorter-spiked kinds do not have. By all means have
a rosy-purple double variety, and a double white. No garden that lives