ss hardy, the Sweet Bay is the noblest of
evergreen bushes or small trees; the Tamarisk, with its grey plumes of
foliage and summer flower-plumes of tenderest pink, is a delightful
plant in our southern counties, doing especially well near the sea.
_Clethra alnifolia_, against a wall or in the open, is a mass of flower
in late summer, and the best of the _Hibiscus syriacus_, or _Althaea
frutex_, the shrubbery representatives of Mallows and Hollyhocks, are
autumn flowers of the best class. A bushy plant of half-woody
character that may well be classed among shrubs, and that was beloved of
our grandmothers, is _Leycesteria formosa_, a delightful thing in the
later autumn. The large-fruited Euonymus (Spindle Tree) is another good
thing too little grown.

[Illustration: _DOUBLE-FLOWERED SLOE OR BLACKTHORN._]

For a peaty garden there are many delightful plants in the neglected
though easy-to-be-had list. One of these is the beautiful and highly
fragrant _Azalea occidentalis_, all the better that the flowers and
leaves come together and that it is later than the Ghent Azaleas. Then
there are the two sweet-scented North American Bog Myrtles, _Myrica
cerifera_ and _Comptonia asplenifolia_, the charming little _Leiophyllum
buxifolium_, of neatest bushy form, and the _Ledum palustre_, whose
bruised leaves are of delightful aromatic fragrance; _Vaccinium
pennsylvanicum_, pretty in leaf and flower and blazing scarlet in
autumn, and _Gaultheria Shallon_, a most important sub-shrub, revelling
in moist peat or any cool sandy soil.

These examples by no means exhaust the list of desirable shrubs that may
be found for the slightest seeking. This brief recital of their names
and qualities is only meant as a reminder that all these good things are
close at hand, while many more are only waiting to be asked for.

CHAPTER II

ORNAMENTAL PLANTING IN WOODLAND

Where woodland adjoins garden ground, and the one passes into the other
by an almost imperceptible gradation, a desire is often felt to let the
garden influence penetrate some way into the wood by the planting within
the wood of some shrubs or trees of distinctly ornamental character.

Such a desire very naturally arises--it is wild gardening with the
things of larger growth; but, like all forms of wild gardening (which of
all branches of gardening is the most difficult to do rightly, and needs
the greatest amount of knowledge), the wishes of the planter must be
tempere