You really can't use too many shrubs in a garden. Unfortunately, they are frequently neglected, because they aren't fancy and expensive. There are so many different types of shrubs that can be used in a garden, all of them beautiful in their own way. In addition to that, if you are going for a more natural look in your garden, shrubs are the way to go.

Shrubs are scattered all around nature, especially along the borders of woodlands. Since it's kind of rare to have this feature in a typical garden, its embellishment with shrubs becomes a bit of a problem. A careful arrangement of shrubbery could obliterate more of the unpleasant, unnatural and inartistic features of the property than any amount of other material or other work.

Shrubs can be used in abundance, because they take up such a small amount of space. They also have the advantage of being short; they do not obscure visibility, and so you have more choice of where to plant them. You can put them in places where a tree can't go.

You can also make the buildings seem more part of the grounds with effective use of shrubs. A building with its smooth surfaces and rectangular lines arising abruptly out of the lawn gives a distinct note of disharmony. The line of demarcation between the straight planes of the building and the natural curves of nature needs to be broken up.

Shrubs irregularly grouped along the walls and massed in retreating angles help to do this. Their most efficient assistants are the climbers, which may cling to walls or twine around porches, becoming almost part and parcel of the building. Shrubs and climbers together, artfully placed, will often bring into the closest harmony a house and grounds which without them would have been at never-ending war with one another.

Prominent lines of the ideal landscape should be curved wherever possible. There is no redundancy in saying here that they should not be straight; it is an important rule, it cannot be stated too many times. In fact it is often disregarded, to the detriment of gardens, public parks and house grounds.

Then again, others make a mistake by accepting it too whole-heartedly, laying curves where there is no room for them and sending you on a long journey that you don't have time for. Straight lines must sometimes be used, but the gardener must then content himself that naturalness is lost.

Artificial constructions, in the sense used here, are meant to cover a multitude of whims that small gardeners—and a few of higher rating—are always introducing in their most prominent places. They are usually totally unnecessary: a lawn vase made of an old stove painted red; a big rat-trap trellis with no honeysuckles to grow on it; a pile of oyster shells supporting a plant tub on the green lawn; and small flower beds edged with inverted beer bottles.

One of the most commonly found mistakes like this is the conventional rockery. There is not space here to explain how to make a good rockery; just know that it is absolutely no good unless it blends in, and looks like it was meant to be there. There are certain cases where an outdoor fountain, or even a garden wall fountain is the exact feature you need to bring everything together.

In addition, proper surroundings can be difficult to achieve. The small, flat front yard of a city garden can never furnish the associations to justify a rockery. When a heap of stones is dumped in the middle of the hand's-breadth of clipped lawn it must be evident to the most sightless observer that naturalness is lost.