Garden Shrubs | Garden Plants
Garden Shrubs | Garden Plants
The value of garden plants may lie in foliage and form rather than in bloom. What kinds of garden shrubs and garden flowers to plant is a wholly secondary and largely a personal consideration. The main plantings are made up of hardy and vigorous species; then the things that you like are added.
There is endless choice in the species, but the arrangement or disposition of the garden plants is far more important than the kinds; and the foliage and form of the plant are usually of more importance than its bloom.
The appreciation of garden foliage effects in the landscape is a higher type of feeling than the desire for mere color. Garden Flowers are transitory, but foliage and garden plant forms are abiding. The common roses have very little value for landscape planting because the foliage and habit of the rose bush are not attractive, the leaves are inveterately attacked by bugs, and the blossoms are fleeting. Some of the wild roses and the Japanese Rosa rugosa, however, have distinct merit for mass effects. Even the common garden flowers, as marigold, zinnias, and gaillardias, are interesting as garden plants forms long before they come into bloom. To many persons the most satisfying epoch in the garden is that preceding the bloom, for the habits and stature of the plants are then unobscured. The early stages of lilies, daffodils, and all perennials are most interesting; and one never appreciates a garden until he realizes that this is so.
Funkia, or day-lily. Where lies the chief interest,--in the plant form or in the bloom? A large-leaved nicotiana. Now let the reader, with these suggestions in mind, observe for one week the plant forms in the humble herbs that he meets, whether these herbs are strong garden plants or the striking sculpturing of mulleins, burdocks, and jimson-weed. Wild bushes are nearly always attractive in form and habit when planted in borders and groups. They improve in appearance under cultivation because they are given a better chance to grow.
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In wild nature there is such fierce struggle for existence that garden plants usually grow to few or single stems, and they are sparse and scraggly in form; but once given all the room they want and a good soil, they become luxurious, full, and comely. In most home grounds in the country the body of the planting may be very effectively composed of bushes taken from the adjacent woods and fields. The masses may then be enlivened by the addition here and there of cultivated bushes, and the planting of garden flowers and herbs about the borders. It is not essential that one know the names of these wild bushes, although a knowledge of their botanical kinships will add greatly to the pleasure of growing them and garden shrubs.
Neither will they look common when transferred to the lawn. There are not many persons who know even the commonest wild bushes intimately, and the things change so much in looks when removed to rich ground that few home-makers recognize them. The awkward century garden plants that has been laboriously carried over winter year by year in the cellar: compare with other plants here shown as to its value as a lawn subject.