CHOOSING AND PLANTING. 5 



All the walls of a fruit garden may be made valuable, 

 even that with the North aspect being needed for shelter, 

 and available for Morello cherries, and some other 

 fruits. 



A well-formed, well-kept bank, with a hedge at the 

 top regularly pruned and thickened, is a good fence to 

 an orchard in the country, especially if the locality be 

 cheap in labour, and dear in bricks and other building 

 commodities. 



For hedges to a fruit garden, evergreens only can be 

 tolerated, and they are so inferior in utility to walls of 

 any kind that they should never be used unless as a 

 positive matter of necessity. 



A nursery for rearing and testing young trees is a 

 valuable adjunct to every establishment where fruit is 

 much thought of: there we can bring forward young 

 trees for future use, increase the choice sorts, try the 

 merits of all which are unknown, and provide stocks for 

 any valuable varieties that may be met with. 



CHAPTER II. 



CHOOSING AND PLANTING. 



EIVE out of every six persons who become possessed of 

 a garden find it already planted to their hands. "What 

 they have to do is to wait and watch in the first instance, 

 lest the indiscriminate rooting up of untried trees effect 

 a work of destruction instead of improvement. Even 

 old and apparently worn-out trees had better be spared 

 for a year, and encouraged into bearing, that the owner, 

 if cutting them up be thought best, may know what he 

 destroys. 



Careful cleansing, liberal pruning, judicious manuring, 

 and scientific general treatment, have rendered many 

 trees which were queer old things to look at, productive 

 and valuable ; and, on the other hand, numbers are ruth- 

 lessly destroyed without need, and gardens thrown back 

 years in productiveness by the process. 



