The Livable House 



and greater cost too often combine to make the weedier privet a 

 favorite. 



Among evergreens, more fame attaches to the name of box 

 than to any other kind of hedge. It is truly the aristocrat among 

 hedges, and an old specimen commands respect and veneration 

 from a hurrying generation, which appreciates to the full its 

 meager inheritance but fails to provide for its children any more 

 generously. 



It is only human to want immediate returns on an investment, 

 to plant for an early effect, to be impatient of waiting for results; 

 and yet a garden should be planned with some eye to permanence 

 as well, and the poplars that go in because of their rapid growth 

 should be tempered with timber trees to give dignity to the garden 

 a decade hence, and a beech hedge started whenever possible to 

 overawe the privet by and by, or one of hawthorn, which will 

 cover its twisted old stems with white blossoms in the spring and 

 red apples in the fall. 



To return to evergreen hedges, both dwarf arbor vitae and the 

 yews (taxus brevifolia and brevifolia cuspidata) make good low 

 hedges; and hemlock, arbor vita?, and cedar are all more or less 

 dependable high hedges. Of these arbor vitae turns rusty in the 

 winter and hemlock sometimes "kills back," but at the height of 

 its glory hemlock probably comes Jiearest to possessing that dark, 

 solid green appearance of English yew hedges, which is so much 

 the envy of us in our drier climate. 



Ilex — of somewhat doubtful hardihood in Northern winters — 



[70] 



