In the winter season, or indeed at any other season, one of the most melancholy¹ things to be seen in our parks and gardens are the long, bare, naked shrubberies, extending, as along the Bayswater Road, more or less for a mile in a place; the soil greasy³, black, seamed with the mutilated roots of the poor shrubs⁴ and trees; which are none the better, but very much the worse, for the cruel annual attention of digging up their young roots without returning any adequate nourishment⁵ or good to the soil. Culturally, the whole thing is suicidal, both for trees and plants. The mere⁶ fact of men having to pass through one[112] of those shrubberies every autumn, and, as they fancy, “prune” and otherwise attend to unfortunate shrubs and low trees, leads to this, and especially to the shrubs taking the appearance of inverted⁷ besoms. Thus a double wrong is done, and at great waste of labour. Any interesting life that might be in the ground is destroyed, and the whole appearance of the shrubbery is made hideous⁸ from the point of view of art; all good culture of flowering or evergreen⁹ shrubs destroyed or made impossible. This system is an orthodox one, that has descended¹⁰ to us from other days, the popular idea being that the right thing to do in autumn is to dig the shrubbery. The total abolition¹¹ of this system, and the adoption¹² of the one to be presently described, would lead to the happiest revolution ever effected in gardening, and be a perfectly¹³ easy, practicable means for the abolition of the inverted besoms, and the choke–muddle shrubbery, and these awful wastes of black soil and mutilated roots.  
Two ideas should be fixed¹⁴ in the mind of the improver, the one being to allow all the beautiful shrubs to assume their natural shapes, either singly or in groups, with sufficient space between to allow of their fair development, so that the shrubbery might, in the flowering season, or indeed at all seasons, be the best kind of conservatory—a beautiful winter garden even, with the branches of most of the shrubs touching¹⁵ the ground, no mutilation whatever visible, and no hard dug line outside the shrubs. This last improvement could easily be effected by forming a natural fringe, so to say, by breaking up the usual hard edge from good planting; by letting, in fact, the edge be formed by well–furnished shrubs projected beyond the hard line, and running in and out as they do on a[113] hill copse, or as the box bushes sometimes do on a Sussex down. Here care, variety in selection, taste and skill in grouping, so as to allow different subjects, whether placed singly or in groups, or little groves¹⁶, being in a position where they may grow well and be seen to advantage, would lead to the most charming results in the open–air garden. With sufficient preparation at first, such shrubberies would be the cause of very little trouble afterwards.
 
Now, such beauty could be obtained without any further aid from other plants; and in many cases it might be desirable to consider the trees and shrubs and their effect only, and let the turf spread in among them; but we have the privilege of adding to this beautiful tree and shrub² life another world of beauty—the bulbs and herbaceous plants, and innumerable beautiful things which go to form the ground flora¹⁷, so to say, of northern and temperate¹⁸ countries, and which light up the world with loveliness in meadow or copse, or wood or alpine¹⁹ pasture in the flowering season. The surface which is dug and wasted in all our parks, and in numbers of our gardens, should be occupied with this varied²⁰ life; not in the miserable²¹ old mixed border fashion, with each plant stuck up with a stick, but with the plants in groups and colonies between the shrubs. In the spaces where turf would not thrive, or where it might be troublesome to keep fresh, we should have irises²², or narcissi, or lupines, or French willows²⁴, or Japan anemones²⁵, or any of scores of other lovely things which people cannot now find a place for in our stiff gardens. The soil which now does little work, and in which the tree–roots every year are mercilessly dug up, would support myriads²⁶ of lovely plants. The necessity of[114] allowing abundant space to the shrubs and trees, both in the young and the adult stage, gives us some space to deal with, which may be occupied with weeds if we do not take care of it. The remedy, then, is to replace the weed by a beautiful flower, and to let some handsome hardy²⁷ plant of the northern world occupy each little space; keeping it clean for us, and, at the same time, repaying us by abundant bloom, or fine foliage²⁸ or habit. This system in the first place allows the shrubs themselves to cover the ground to a great extent. In the London parks now every shrub is cut under so as to allow the digger to get near it; and this leads to the most comical and villainous of shapes ever assumed by bushes. Even the lilac bushes, which we see so horribly stiff, will cover the ground with their branches if allowed room enough; therefore, to a great extent, we should have the branches themselves covering the ground instead of what we now see. But open spaces, little bays and avenues running in among the shrubs, are absolutely essential, if we want to fully²⁹ enjoy what ought to be the beautiful inhabitants of our shrub garden. Such openings offer delightful³⁰ retreats for hardy flowers, many of which thrive better in semi–shady spots than they do in the open, while the effect of the flowers is immeasurably enhanced by the foliage of the shrubs around. To carry out this plan well, one should have, if possible, a good selection of the shrubs to begin with, although the plainest shrubbery, which is not overgrown or overcrowded, may be embellished³² with hardy plants on the ground. The plan may be adopted in the case of new shrubberies being formed, or in the case of old ones; though the old ones are frequently so dried up and overcro............