Opportunities for good gardening are so often overlooked that it may be well to draw attention to some of those that are most commonly neglected.

When woodland joins garden ground there is too often a sudden jolt; the wood ends with a hard line, sometimes with a path along it, accentuating the defect. When the wood is of Scotch Fir of some age there is a monotonous emptiness of naked trunk and bare ground. In wild moorland this is characteristic and has its own beauty; it may even pleasantly accompany the garden when there is only a view into it here and there; but when the path passes along, furlong after furlong, with no attempt to bring the wood into harmony with the garden, then the monotony becomes oppressive and the sudden jolt is unpleasantly perceived. There is the well-stocked garden and there is the hollow wood with no cohesion between the two—no sort of effort to make them join hands.

It would have been better if from the first the garden had not been brought quite so close to the wood, then the space between, anything from twenty-five to forty feet, might have been planted so as to bring them into unison. In such a case the path would go, not next the trees but along the middle of the neutral ground and would be so planted as to belong equally to garden and wood. The trees would then take their place as the bounding and sheltering feature. It is better to plan it like this at first than to gain the space by felling the outer trees, because the trees at the natural wood edge are better furnished with side branches. Such ground on the shady side of the Scotch Firs would be the best possible site for a Rhododendron walk, and for Azaleas and Kalmias, kept distinct from the Rhododendrons. Then the Scotch Fir indicates the presence of a light peaty soil; the very thing for that excellent but much-neglected undershrub Gaultheria Shallon. This is one of the few things that will grow actually under the Firs, not perhaps in the densest part of an old wood, but anywhere about its edges, or where any light comes in at a clearing or along a cart-way. When once established it spreads with a steady abundance of increase, creeping underground and gradually clothing more and more of the floor of the wood. The flower and fruit have already been shown at pp. 18-19.

Rhododendrons are usually planted much too close together. This is a great mistake; they should not be nearer than eight to ten feet, or even further, apart, especially in the case of ponticum and some of the larger growing kinds. It is a common practice to fill up the edges of their prepared places with a collection of Heaths. The soil will no doubt suit Heaths, but I never do it or recommend it because I feel that the right place for Heaths is quite open ground, and there are other plants that I think look better with the young Rhododendrons. For my own liking the best of these are hardy Ferns—Male Fern, Lady Fern and Dilated Shield Fern, with groups of Lilies: L. longiflorum and the lovely rosy L. rubellum towards the front, and L. auratum further back. Some of the Andromedas, especially CatesbÆi and axillaris of the LeucothoË[ section are capital plants for this use. Besides Lilies, a few other flowering plants suitable for the Rhododendron walk are: white Foxgloves, white Columbine, white Epilobium angustifolium, Trillium, Epimedium pinnatum, Uvularia grandiflora, Dentaria diphylla and Gentiana asclepiadea. In the same region, and also partly as edgings to the Rhododendron clumps, suitable small bushes are Rhododendron myrtifolium, the Alpenrose (R. ferruginium) and the sweet-leaved Ledum palustre.

When the garden comes on the sunny side of the wood the planting would be quite different. Here is the place for Cistuses; for the bolder groups the best are C. laurifolius and C. cyprius, backed by plantings of Tamarisk, Arbutus and White Broom, with here and there a free-growing Rose of the wilder sort, such as the type polyantha and Brunonis. If the fir-boughs come down within reach, the wild Clematis (C. Vitalba) can be led into them; it will soon ramble up the tree, filling it with its pretty foliage and abundance of August bloom.

The Cistuses delight in a groundwork of Heath; the wild Calluna looks as well as any, but if cultivated kinds are used they should be in good quantities of one sort at a time, and never as hard edgings, but as free carpeting masses.

For the edges of other kinds of woodland the free Roses are always beautiful; where a Holly comes to the front, a Rose such as Dundee Rambler or the Garland will grow up it, supported by its outer branches in the most delightful way. The wild Clematis is in place here too, also the shade-loving plants already named. In deciduous woodland there is probably some undergrowth of Hazel, or of Bramble and wild Honeysuckle. White Foxgloves should be planted at the edge and a little way back, Daffodils for the time when the leaves are not yet there, and Lily of the Valley, whose charming bloom and brilliant foliage come with the young leaves of May.

Where the wood comes nearest the house with only lawn between, it is well to have a grouping of hardy Ferns and Lilies; where it is giving place to garden ground and there is a shrubby background, the smaller Polygonums, such as P. compactum, are in place.

The spaces more or less wide between large shrubs and turf are full of opportunities for ingenious treatment; they are just the places most often neglected, or at any rate not well enough considered. I have always taken delight in working out satisfactory ways of treating them. It seems desirable to have, next the grass, some foliage of rather distinct and important size or form. For this use the Megaseas are invaluable; the one most generally useful being the large variety of M. cordifolia. Funkias are also beautiful, but as their leaves come late and go with the first frosts or even earlier, whereas the Megaseas persist the whole year round, the latter are the most generally desirable. These shrub-edge spaces occur for the most part in bays, giving an inducement to invent a separate treatment for each bay.

The two illustrations with the front planting of Funkia Sieboldi are two adjoining bays; one showing the charming shrubby Aster Olearia Gunni in the middle of June, the other some groups of Lilium longiflorum, planted in November of the year before, and in bloom in early August.

Sometimes a single plant of Gypsophila paniculata will fill the whole of one of the recesses or bays between the larger shrubs; Hydrangea paniculata is another good filling plant, and the hardy Fuchsias; both of these, though really woody shrubs, being cut down every winter and treated as herbaceous plants.

There is a small growing perennial Aster—I will not venture on its specific name, but have seen it figured in an American book of wild flowers as divaricata, and provisionally know it by that name. I find it, in conjunction with Megasea, one of the most useful of these filling plants for edge spaces that just want some pretty trimming but are not wide enough for anything larger. The same group was photographed two years running. The first year the bloom was a little thicker below, but the second I thought it still better when it had partly rambled up into the lower branches of the Weigela that stood behind it. The little thin starry flower is white and is borne in branching heads; the leaves are lance-shaped and sharply pointed; but when the plant is examined in the hand its most distinct character is the small fine wire-like stem, smooth and nearly black, that branches about in an angular way of its own.

These are only a very few examples of what may also be done in a number of other ways, but if they serve to draw attention to those generally neglected shrub edges, it may be to the benefit of many gardens. Where there is room for a good group of plants they should be of some size or solidity of character such as Tree Lupine, Peony, Acanthus, SpirÆa Aruncus, the larger hardy Ferns, Rubus nutkanus or plants of some such size and character. The low-growing Bambusa tessellata is a capital shrub-edge plant.