3i6 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



animals are wrongly attributed to other causes. Worse still, the 

 ignorance of the pretended landscape gardeners, who scatter the 

 Yew liberally about, even near the approaches to the house, where 

 the horses can scarcely miss it 



I must write to tell you of our sad experience of the fatal effects of Yew 

 clippings. About the beginning of the year some Yew trees had to be cut 

 and some (not a large quantity) of the clippings were thrown on a rubbish 

 heap in what we call the park. No one seems to have known the danger. A few 

 weeks after, our tenant turned seven bullocks into the park, and four of the seven 

 died. We have had to pay compensation for the act of our servant. The man did 

 not know, and even a nursery gardener whom I had to see in connection with the 

 matter was ignorant of the danger. You cannot emphasise too strongly the 

 necessity of keeping Yew, alive of dead, out of the reach of stock and of horses, 

 which I am told are even more easily killed. A. F. KIRKPATRICK, Deanery, Ely. 



Even the arrival court to a country house is often bordered by 

 a line of Yew near for any straying animal to poison itself. In many 

 cases where the hard line of the Yew hedge is used it is to get a less 

 artistic result than could be got in other ways by low walls, fences, 

 and evergreens like Holly and Box, guileless of poisoning. 



Anything more inartistic or wrong as to planting, than the clip- 

 ping of trees, could not be conceived ; all the more so when practised 

 upon shrubs like the Holly, the beauty of which depends on the 

 growth being free. The graceful toss and growth, and the play of light 

 and shade, and, last of all, the finest effect of our winters, the berries 

 of the Holly. Unhappily, when people see this clipping practised 

 in public gardens they are very apt to imitate it in their own gardens, 

 and thus acres of beautiful evergreens in the suburbs of London and 

 every city in Britain are disfigured in the same way. The common 

 idea that the hard line of clipped Yew hedge -is the best background 

 for garden effects is wrong, and may well be got out of the heads of 

 designers of gardens. 



