CHAP. IV VILLA GARDENING 249 



should erect espaliers less than 5 feet high, and they may with 

 advantage be higher. If strong well-grown maiden trees can be 

 had, I shoidd recommend them ; but rather than plant weak maidens 

 I shoidd select good trees one-year trained. No one can dig up a 

 tree and move it from one part to another of the same garden 

 "without checking its growth ; and though this may not inflict any 

 injury upou a robust subject, it woidd probably do so to a weakly 

 tree. If the tree so transplanted had to undergo a jom'uey from 

 perhaps a distant nm-sery, its debilitating effect would remain for 

 a long time. This is why I think weak maidens shoidd not be 

 moved at all the first year. The mode of clothing the wires of an 

 espalier with branches is well understood by most, and indeed the 

 whole matter is so simple as to need but little exiDlanation. The 

 formation of the tree begins at the bottom, and to give the bottom 

 branches a start the central or leading shoot is headed back to 

 the second wire. For the first three or four years, at any rate, 

 only one pair of branches should be made annually. Later on, 

 when the growth becomes more rapid, sometimes two pairs of 

 branches may be started by pinching the leader in summer back 

 to the wire, and laying in a pair of laterals, which will generally 

 break away at the point stopped. AVhen the espaliers are more 

 than 5 feet high, 



The Palmette Verrier system of training may be adopted 

 with advantage. This, I need hardly tell many of my readers, is 

 a modification of the horizontal and the vertical. The shoots are 

 taken from the main central stem in pairs, at first horizontally, 

 to the outside of the space the tree is intended to cover, and are 

 then led upwards vertically till the top of the fence or wall is 

 reached, the system being just as well adapted for wall training as 

 for espaliers. All the future branches are manipulated in exactly 

 the same manner. It is exceedingly simile — calculated to keep 

 the bottom well fiu-nished, which the espalier system, pure and 

 simple, sometimes fails to do, and is also an expeditious way of 

 furnishing a given space. A word here as to the use to be made 

 of the Qiunce stock. They are useful in ungenial soils and situa- 

 tions, but should not be employed where the soil is light, or the 

 fruit will be gritty and small, and the trees short-lived. The 

 stock in all cases should be buried in planting, and the trees 

 heavily mulched in summer. The manure should be raked oft" in 

 February, and the smface lightly stirred up with a fork ; this 

 mil sweeten it, and correct the close pasty character which a soil 

 always covered assumes. Before the weather becomes very dry 

 the mulch should be renewed. 



Cordons. — This system of training has not yet come generally into 



