The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

15 Basic Ways To Landscape Your Homepage

Many deciduous shrubs are especially useful for hedges, as foundation plants, beside doorways and entrances, as accent plants in a border, as boundary plants and as individual specimens.

Growing habits of all shrubs are varied Shapes include dense, tapering, drooping, sprawling or spreading. lor your garden's background choose a shrub of good foliage, preferably with coarse leaves which provide a thick screen. These should be tall and v igorous.

In front of tall backgrounds or around the foundation of your house, plant the smaller-leaved shrubs. These may be selected for their value in flower, berry, or other special characteristics.

The most showy and spectacular plants are usually picked for specimen shrubs and should have some outstanding feature which can best be emphasized Standing alone.

Outstanding hardy deciduous flowering shrubs which may be grown successfully and beautifully throughout all sections of the country include:

WE1GELA—Particularly the variety Bristol Ruby. Sparkling ruby-red trumpet-shaped flowers produced in immense displays during early spring. It flowers intermittently throughout the summer and autumn. Growing to about seven feet, perfectly formed and well rounded, it makes an excellent individual specimen plant. Wiegelas require very little pruning, prefer sun and thrive in a good moist soil.

SPIREA—An important family of shrubs, of low, three-foot varieties to those growing in eight feet or more. The so-called snowbank spirea is one of the most beautiful. It is gracefully slender but erect and grows to about five feet. Branches are thin, arching and are covered with masses of pure white flowers in great profusion.

Spircas have many uses according to varieties. Use some for tall backgrounds, others
for low growth in foundation planting, as a specimen shrub, or as an informal hedge. Spircas ire not too particular as to soils. Prune spring-flowering varieties after blooming. Late-flowering varieties may be pruned in early spring.

LILACS—Old time favorites with many improved varieties. Lilacs are mostly large hardy shrubs of easy culture, free-flowering and beautifully colored in shades of white, lavender, purple and blue. Varieties have been developed to extend the spring blooming period. In addition to providing fragrant blossoms lilacs make excellent tall screen hedges to provide almost complete seclusion. Lilacs are tolerant of almost any soil. Cutting the lilacs with rather long stems ordinarily provides all the pruning necessary.

FLOWERING QUINCE One of the fust shrubs to bloom in spring. Brilliant flowers and shiny foliage place them in a must list for a spring garden display. Many improved varieties are available. They may be allowed to grow into specimen plants or trimmed into hedges. Ultimate growth is about six leer. There are also dwarf varieties. Mowers are red, coral, pink and white. The fruit of the quince is suitable for making jelly.

The quince can be trained in tree form, and its graceful branches make a unique specimen. Quinces also appear to good advantage in a bed of low shrubs. Do not prune until after spring bloom.