taste, there is
nothing that would do more for the beauty of our gardens or grounds.
Nothing can so effectually destroy good effect as the usual senseless
mixture of deciduous and evergreen shrubs that, alas! is so commonly
seen in gardens--a mixture of one each of a quantity of perhaps
excellent things planted about three feet apart. There would be nothing
to be said against this if it were the deliberate intention of any
individual, for, as a garden is for the owner's happiness, it is
indisputably his right to take his pleasure in it as he will, and if he
says, "I have only space for a hundred plants, and I wish them to be all
different," that is for him to decide. But when the mixture is made from
pure ignorance or helplessness it is then that advice may be of use, and
that the assurance may be given that there are better ways that are just
as easy at the beginning, and that with every year will be growing on
towards some definite scheme of beauty, instead of merely growing up
into a foolish tangle of horticultural imbecility.

If the intending planter has no knowledge it is well worth his while to
take advice at the beginning, not to plant at random and to feel, a few
years later, first doubt, and then regret, and then, as knowledge grows,
to have to face the fact that it is all wrong and that much precious
time has been lost.

How to group is a large question, depending on all the conditions of the
place under consideration. Whether a group is to be of tall or short
growing shrubs or trees, whether it is to be of three or three hundred,
and so on. The knowledge that can answer is the knowledge of gardening
of the better kind. The whole thing should be done carefully on paper
beforehand, or there will again be repented the error of huddled single
plants. The groups will have to be well shaped and well sized and well
related to each other and all that is near, or they may be merely a
series of senseless blocks, not intelligently formed groups at all.

Then, in proper relation to the groups, single plants can be used with
the best possible effect, as, for instance, a snowy Mespilus or a Cherry
or a _Pyrus floribunda_ against a dark massing of Yew or Holly; or a
_Forsythia suspensa_ casting out its long flowering branches from among
bushes of _Berberis_. Then the fewer individuals will have their full
value, while the larger masses will have dignity even when in leaf only,
and their own special beauty at the time wh