About Hedges and Border Plants 51 



Section II. 



CHAPTER X. 

 ABOUT HEDGES AND BORDER PLANTS. 



THERE are more badly-grown hedges in South Africa, in propor r 

 tion to its white population, than in any other country occupied 

 by Europeans. Heaven knows there are plenty of such failures 

 in all countries, but here there must be something grievously 

 wrong somewhere. One does not, of course, expect to find fine 

 old Yew or Juniper fences, which have been cared for by trained 

 gardeners for centuries; but surely one may reasonably expect 

 fulness and symmetry and health in the younger hedges of this 

 young country. 



Let us give one or two reasons for the failure, and then per- 

 haps we may find out how to succeed. Most people want to 

 create a hedge in just a year, or two years, and to this end very 

 quick growing plants are purchased, as big as they can be got. 

 Some, again, choose trees which are entirely unsuited to the 

 locality or soil. Some folk are like Spring poets, full of longing 

 and with ideals of magnificent green hedges just when the first 

 Spring rains fall and the buds appear. They plant and that is 

 all. Once planted a hedge is expected to take care of itself. But 

 it won't! 



Then some hedges are in the wrong place. To plant in order 

 to shut out the view of your pretty garden from the man in the 

 street is selfish. To plant a hedge within a few feet of a flower 

 bed is disastrous to the flowers, and yet some front gardens are 

 so small that there is no room for both. 



The place for a hedge is (a) Around the vegetable garden, to 

 screen off the formality of this utility spot from the rest of the 

 grounds, and to keep out dogs and high winds. (6) To act as! 

 a screen between town lots, on the left and right of the house;, 

 for the sake of privacy, (c) To screen off the washing and dryi- 

 ing ground, or any other necessary and inartistic place about the 

 home, and (d) To define low boundaries to paths and sections of 

 the garden. 



Note the omissions from popular ideas. There is to be no 

 hedge on the street boundary let your flowers be enjoyed by the 

 passers-by. No hedge on the sides of the carriage drive there 

 should be grass and shrubbery there. 



