For this purpose, you can use inexpensive shrubs like privets, witch-hazels, cornels, and some of the viburnums, that are quick growing and not par ticularly conspicuous. The fillers give a more immediate effect, discourage weeds, conserve moisture by shading the ground, and so cut down maintenance. They are especially needed near the front, where open spaces are unsightly. In the back portions of the border they have no great value. Remember, to remove these filler shrubs before they hamper the growth of more valuable plants. The great danger in using filler ma terial for immediate effect is that you will not remove it in time, or at all, and the quality of your whole composition will be ruined.

How to Plan a Shrub Border

Let us now consider a particular shrub border surrounding a garden, say forty by sixty feet. Select a dominant shrub first, the common lilac for instance. This makes a fairly tall, dense mass, with good foliage and twig character and carries plenty of bloom high up and gracefully. It does not face itself down particularly well, and in time grows leggy. Use the lilac in recurrent masses of varying size throughout the length of the border and balance the planting so that in lilac time you will see nearly equal masses of bloom on either side of the main axial line.

These recurrent groups also develop sequence. Place the lilacs well back in the border, at least six feet. In front of them plant Vanhoutte and bridalwreath spirea, jetbead, and Lemoine deutzia for interest. Between the lilac groups and behind them, set the taller viburnums, alders, and honey suckles. At the corners of the garden, provide accent with a small group of pointed evergreens-cedar, arborvitae, and spruces sticking up above the level of the shrubs; or use birches, flowering crabapples, or dogwood, if the winter aspect of the garden is unimportant. A little over halfway down the length of the garden, it might be wise to place an accent in the side borders, especially if there is a cross axis which needs termination.

To increase apparent distance, use a few gray-foliaged plants at the far end. If your situation involves shade, choose instead of lilacs for the dominant mass two or three of the better viburnums like lentago, lantana, and tomentosum, and with these use Ilex verticillata, symplocos, Cornus mas, and native azaleas for interest, with birches, hemlocks, or sour wood for accent.