The old-fashioned smoke tree is one of these, and the weeping varieties of beech, birch, cherry, hemlock, and spruce. You may also want English or French holly, or laurelcherry although you realize they may not survive our winters. Many of the variegated or colored-foliage plants be long to this group as do outstanding or picturesque dogwoods and apple trees.

Toward the end of the last century, it was common practice to dot such plants all over the grounds without regard to com position or relationship to each other. This became tiresome and a reaction set in, resulting in our massing all our plants in beds and borders and giving up specimens entirely. Neither method is right. The use of too many specimens is bad, and using none at all robs us of the pleasure of enjoying plants that can only be properly grown that way.

Much depends on how specimens are used. They cannot be scattered hit and miss all over, but if planted in relation to something else, they point up a design otherwise too set. For instance, if there is a deep bay in the shrub border, you can plant a weeping beech therein; or if there is a sharp point, or if the border comes to a property corner, a fine Nordmann fir or cedar of Lebanon may be just right for emphasis. In the flower border too, especially if it is as long and as wide as it should be, an occasional specimen shrub or the same shrub repeated at intervals, will break monotony and add rhythmic interest. Enkianthus, buddleia, caryopteris, or some such ex otic plant is the thing for this use, or perhaps a fine evergreen, a dwarf retinospora, or for the more formal touch, a clipped yew. (Plate 27.)

In the formal scheme there is wide opportunity for speci mens. They will be needed for high accent points at the cor ners of paths, or each side of the entrance, or to back up a terminal. Since every axis line, major or minor, should be terminated, and in a simple scheme statuary or a bench may seem out of place, plants outstanding in themselves or differ ent from their neighbors may be used. We are thinking here of situations at the end of a side or minor axis where you might use one conical evergreen planted right in the surround ing shrub border. Or it might be a fairly large dogwood or crabapple that is set behind the shrub border to be seen over it. The use of plant material in this way tends to strengthen the design by tying up all the loose ends. A major line in de sign should never be allowed to trail off into space, but should be adequately terminated to redirect the observer's attention back into the composition.