EVERGREENS IN WINTER.

Otago Witness, Issue 1905, 25 May 1888, Page 6

EVERGREENS IN WINTER.

The judicious placing of evergreen trees about the country houses should be made a first consideration. " They should be planted so that, look in whatever direction we may, evergreens are before us. Nothing so cheers the bleak winter season ; nothing adds more to the attractiveness of the home. Thickets or " clumps "of evergreens, except for special purposes, are objectionable. Each one interferes with the others, aod while we have a mass of green, yet there is no one tree that can ever develop the symmetry, the perfection of which it is capable. A single hemlock or other spruce, a retinispora, fir, or pine, if treated according to its deeds, becomes a grand object, ever beautiful. A cluster of anyone or of all becomes in, a few years only a mass of green made up of unsightly individuals. Evergreens are the out-door blessing of winter to the country home, enlivening and warming the otherwise bleak and cheerless view. One may still enjoy a daily walk, feeling that there is some shelter from the wintry blast — something of summer's life and warmth about him. Evergreens can never supply the place of decidwpus trees in the growing season ; yet if a proper distribution of each is made, either kind is an agreeable, pleasing companion to the other. It is well in planting the two classes of trees so to place them that the deciduous trees may for the most part fill the more conspicuous sites of the grounds, the evergreens the more diotant 'places ; yet this must not be carried too far. What we would impress upon our readers is that while evergreens in their more formal outlines may not be as necessary in adorning the home grounds as are oaks and maples, beeches, and elms during the summer season, yet even then they add the charm of variety and a beauty quite their own. But it is in winter, when the naked, stiff branches of deciduous trees st&nd as if monuments of winter's destructive blasts, that the warm evergreens are most of all to be prized.