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Wooded Areas (Plants which most successfully)

THE plants which most successfully fill the requirements for undergrowth planting are our native woodland species. These requirements are mainly the ability to succeed in partial or dense shade and also to survive the struggle for moisture, food, and room which always exists in a naturalistic planting where the ground below and the air above are already well occupied by large trees. Our northern forests contain a profusion of plants which will succeed as undergrowth. But too often in the past not enough care has been taken to choose only those plants which are desirable from an ornamental point of view. It is possible, however, to select from the large amount of available material all the plants which are necessary to carry out an undergrowth planting on any scale, and at the same time use only plants which are desirable on account of their flowering habits, their fruits, the autumn colouration of their leaves, their evergreen character, or some equally valuable characteristic quality.

One of the best examples of a successful shrub for undergrowth is the well-known maple-leaved viburnum, which produces white flowers in June and blue fruits in the autumn, and whose leaves in autumn have a striking pink colour. Other shrubs which lend themselves very readily to undergrowth planting are the sweet pepper bush, with its profuse white flowers; the Carolina allspice, on account of its fragrance and autumn colour; and the chokeberries and winterberry, useful for their striking autumn fruits. Among the coniferous evergreens the native hemlock and the balsam fir are very satisfactory plants. The Douglas spruce also promises well and is adaptable to almost any soil. In choosing smaller plants of perennial herbaceous character much care should be taken to avoid weedy species or those without some especially worth-while characteristic. There are many native forms which are valuable for their green foliage alone, such as the Christmas fern, which is evergreen also, the ostrich fern, Clayton's fern, and the