Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/213

Rh each his season and colour: so to childhood and autumn the gay hues, to spring and adolescence the pale ones, to winter and old age the dark and sombre ones.

While it is an axiom that four-fifths of the trees in the garden must be evergreen, it would be wrong to suppose that all this vegetation is kept to that sombre note. That the relief of flowers and of colour is sought and intended is seen by the fact that hardly a garden in the country has not its Plum or Cherry tree, its Irises, thin-petalled as if made of tissue paper or of fine soft silk, its pots of Peonies, or Asters, or Morning Glories, or sweet-scented splendid Lilies, or its little Maples to warm it in the fall. Also, among the evergreen trees are included many flowering trees and Camellias, whose waxy blooms come to cheer December and January, and various golden-stemmed Bamboos, that give a warm note of colour even in the snow. Evergreens, in groups, are set near the living-room windows, so that a continued sense of life and greenness may be seen from them throughout the changes of the four seasons. Deciduous trees, always excepting Plum and Cherry, and perhaps, occasionally, Maple, are not usually put very close to the house, because of the litter their falling leaves make in the autumn (for the Japanese are tidy garden keepers), and because dead leaves there bring a sense of desolation. But, with the nice