Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-04-08

Shrubbery is where most home
owners fall down.
Many a house purchaser will go in"
for roses on a large scale. He will sod
an entire yard, at large cost, and pur-
chase many and expensive evergreens.
Ordinarily, however, he will plant
only a few lilacs. or altheas, or but
terf1y' bushes, or spireas, or similar
things.
Yet shrubs, no less than iris. or
rhododendrons, 90 their best in mass
paintings. If l lilac is good 20 lilacs
are better
If an althea. or Rose of Sharon, as
it Is often called, is good in a few
situations, the chances are that it will
be excellent in many.
Those interested in the home grounds
will discover, if they keep their eyes
open, that the average place is rather
underplanted than overplanted.
Too few shrubs, rather than too
many, seems the rule And this in
view CT the fact that exactly the OPP
posite is true with many homeowners
when they come to the matter of ever
green's.
You will see many home grounds
fairly hidden by evergreens. There will
be pines and hemloSks and the more
popular thing, as we'll as specimens
which few but experts know anything
about.
This state of affairs can only have
arisen because the shrubs are common
to every nome and have come to be
looked down upon to some extent by
many who ought to know better
There is really no sophistication
times, when they begin considering
their paintings in relation to their
houses, they tend to take on some CT
the worst characteristics Of the snob.
Now let no one sneer at the Snob
without knowing whereat he sneers.
There are good sncbs and bad snobs.
excellent snobs and unpleasant snobs.
There are no two snobs exactly alike,
sny more than there are any two
fingerprints precisely the same.
Many a snob is an admirable human
being. That was all a certain pro-
fessor of English was attempting to
say when he got himself a neat bit
CT publicity on a national scale about
year ago by advising his students
TO be snobs.
A whole-souled snob man or wom-
an who values the better things of
life, with an emphasis on the esthetic
side, will often be. indeed. the superior
sort of person which he believes him
self to be. It is an amazing thing, but
true.
Therefore the hats Of the tolerant
person will often be OF to the snob, so
long as his snobbery hurts no enc but
himself. The tolerant person, who be-
lieves that liberation applies to all de-
partments of life and living, not just
to the religious, will welcome the true
snob as an interesting and often pleas
ant figures
The snobbery which looks down on
the honest shrubs, however. is big
mistake for there are no plants which
can do more for a home than these.
Perhaps no enc would ever frown
upon shrubs II 1t were not for the
fact that often there Is q bit of I'M
pleasant snobbery in the art and prac-
tice Of interior decoration, and that
this is sometimes carried into the out
doors.
Somehow snobbery, even the mild
kind, goes better indoors than out.
Sophistication is a hcthouse disease
and looks better on a woven rug than
on a carpet Of grass.
Shrubbery, as such, offers the home
owner more for his money than almost
anything else in the plant line, unless
1t be trees.
Shrubs are. after all, little trees.
Even the dictionaries are forced to use
the tree, in defining the word shrub,
in their comparisons.
One puts it this way: Shrub
woody plant of less size than tree and
usually divided into separate stems
from near the ground"
Another big book speaks OF shrub
as a woody -stemmed perennial plant,
differing from a tree in lesser height
and the number Of primary stems.
These lateral shoots are lost by real
trees in a few years, but the SHRUB
retains them. The tree throws up It's
trunk many feet before the branches