VIBURNUM TINUS (_Laurustinus_).--A beautiful evergreen flowering shrub, and generally well known, but unfortunately it is not sufficiently hardy to plant in many parts of the country, especially in exposed positions. It will grow and flower profusely in very shallow and, indeed, in almost any soil. It makes a handsome bed, and should be planted 4 feet apart.
The Hon. Vicary Gibbs has taken keen interest in the tree and shrub planting in the gardens of Aldenham House.
The best and best known of our good hardy climbing shrubs are by no means neglected, but yet they are not nearly as much or as well used as they might be. Such a fine thing as the easily-grown _Clematis montana_ will not only cover house and garden walls with its sheets of lovely bloom, but it is willing to grow in wilder ways among trees and shrubs, where its natural way of making graceful garlands and hanging ropes of bloom shows its truest and best uses much better than when it is trained straight along the joints of walls or tied in more stiffly and closely. Even if there are only a few stiff bushes such as Gorse or low Thorns to support and guide it, it gladly covers them just as does the Traveller's Joy (_Clematis Vitalba_) of our chalkland hedges. This climber, though a native plant and very common in calcareous soils, is worthy of any garden. _C. V. rosea_ is a very fine variety. _Clematis Flammula_ is another of the family that should be more often treated in a free way, and grown partly trained through the branches of a Yew or an Ilex. The less-known _Clematis orientalis_, with yellow flowers and feathery seeds, and the fine October-blooming _C. paniculata_, make up five members of one family, apart from the large-flowered Clematises, that all lend themselves willingly to this class of pictorial treatment.
[Illustration: _CLEMATIS MONTANA OVER ROUGH WALL._]
One of the most important of our climbing shrubs, the _Wistaria_, makes grand growth in all the south of England. This also can be used to excellent effect trained into some rather thinly-furnished tree such as an old Acacia. Its grey snake-like stems and masses of bloom high up in the supporting tree are shown to excellent effect. This is also a fine plant for a pergola. A few plants growing free and rambling full length would, after the first few years, when they are getting old, cover a pergola from end to end. The piers or posts could also be covered with the same, for though the nature of the plant is to ramble, yet if kept to one stem and closely pruned it readily adapts itself to pillar form, and bears a wonderful quantity of bloom.