THE JOYOUS ART OF GARDENING 



there, it's ugly, you know it, and during eight months in the 

 year it shows plainly and every one knows it. For city gar- 

 dens there should be walls of the same material as that of 

 which the house is built. If the house is of wood, then a fence, 

 if you like, but one of good design, not a bill-board to be hidden. 

 Some of the older fences were dignified and admirable, with 

 pilasters of good proportion, tall enough to give a good effect. 



Some of the best garden walls and fences in this country 

 are to be seen in Charleston, S. C. Here is sometimes a wall 

 relieved by blind arches the bricks in the intervening spaces 

 being only one foot thick and covered with plaster, and against 

 the walls are blossoming fruit-trees, pomegranates, Japanese 

 plums, roses, and oleanders, and over them grows ivy it's a 

 lovely setting for a city garden. 



As a substitute for the wall or the fence comes the living 

 wall of green the hedge. In this country we have no hedge 

 that exactly takes the place of the English yew, which cannot 

 endure our variable climate. In fact, the chief objection to a 

 hedge in America is a climatic one that there may be a day 

 of judgment when two or three plants of a twenty-year-old 

 hedge are, after living so long, killed in an unusually difficult 

 winter. And then there is the hole ! To find plants of the same 

 size is not easy, unless one has planted and maintained a re- 

 serve for just such an emergency. 



The usual hedges in the North are arbor- vitse, spruce, hem- 

 lock, California privet. The Japanese holly, of which much 

 was hoped, is not altogether trustworthy north of New York. 

 In the South, where a much wider range is possible ilex or 

 magnolia can be used. A wonderful hedge could be made of 

 camellias, though I never have seen them used for such a pur- 

 pose. 



At Cornish, in New Hampshire, Saint-Gaudens made tall 



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