THE CHERRY. 



553 



it is a favourite practice with the possessors of gardens to eat the fruit 

 direct from the trees or plants, and there are many rural cottage gardens 

 in Britain where such treats are offered at so much per head. In the 

 villas of the wealthy, a small garden, in some retired part of the grounds 

 near the house, was set apart for this purpose, and planted with 

 summer fruits, especially cherries, gooseberries, and strawberries ; and 

 in some cases this garden was entirely covered with a roof of netting. 

 One of the most complete gardens of this kind, in the neighbourhood of 

 London, existed, in 1828, at Hylands, near Chelmsford. It was in the 

 form of a parallelogram, twice as long as broad, and contained a quarter 

 of an acre. It was surrounded by a wire fence, ten feet high, the 

 texture being such as to exclude small birds that is, each mesh was 

 two inches high by one inch broad. The principal standard trees are 

 cherries of the best early and late kinds, one or two early apples, 

 one or two early pears, and one or two early plums. The trees are 

 planted in quincunx, and their branches are trained in a horizontal posi- 

 tion so as to be within reach of the hand, by being tied down to stakes. 

 All round the margin are, first a bed of strawberries, and next a row of 

 plants of gooseberry, currant, and raspberry. A gravel walk surrounds 

 the whole, between the straw- -, 



berry-bed and the row of 

 fruit-shrubs, and the space 

 among the standard trees is 

 simply left unstirred, so that 

 when dry every part of it 

 may be walked on. The 

 manner in which the roof of 

 netting is fixed over this 

 garden is thus : At regular 

 distances allthrough the area, 

 wooden boxes, as sockets for 

 posts, as at fig. 366 6, are fixed 

 in the ground, and when the 

 cherries begin to ripen a net 

 of the kind used in pilchard- 

 fishing, and made at Bridport, in Dorsetshire, the meshes of which 

 are two inches wide, is drawn over the whole parallelogram, fastened 

 to the top of the wire fence by hooks which are fixed there, and 

 supported above the trees by the props placed in the sockets. These 

 props are fourteen feet high at the sides, and gradually rise to 

 the middle of the garden, and they have blunt heads, in order 

 not to injure the netting. The netting necessary for covering this 

 space, which is eighty feet by two hundred and twenty feet, is in 

 two pieces, each one hundred feet by one hundred and fifty fret ; it is 

 put on in the following manner : One piece is spread out immediately 

 within the wire fence, and a number of men with poles carry it over the 

 top of the trees and posts, after it is fastened to one side; then they fasten 

 on the other, and so on till the whole is completed. The separate 

 divisions are then joined together, which thus form one entire netted 



Netting for covering a cherry garden. 



