I.] THE AMERICAN GARDENER. 29 



not English Hedges, instead of post-and-rail and 

 board fences ? If, instead of these steril-looking and 

 cheerless enclosures the gardens and meadows and 

 fields, in the neighbourhood of New York and other 

 cities and towns, were divided by quick-set hedges, 

 what a difference would the alteration make in the 

 look, and in the real value too, of those gardens, 

 meadows and fields! 



50. It may be said, perhaps, that, after you have 

 g-ot your hedge to the desired height, it must still 

 be kept clipped twice in the summer ; and that, 

 therefore, if the fence is everlasting, the trouble of 

 it is also everlasting. But, in the first place, you 

 can have nothing good from the earth without an- 

 nual care. In the next place, a wooden fence will 

 soon want nailing and patching annually, during the 

 years of its comparatively short duration. And, 

 lastly, what is the annual expense of clipping, when 

 you have got your hedge to its proper height and 

 width, and when the work may be done with a long- 

 handled hook instead of a pair of shears, which is 

 necessary at first? In England such work is done 

 for a penny a rod, twice in the summer. Allow 

 three times as much in America, and then the an- 

 nual expense of the garden hedge will be less than 

 four dollars a year. 



51. Thus, then, at the end of the first twenty 

 years, the hedge would have cost a hundred and 

 nine dollars. And, for ever after, it would cost 

 only eighty dollars in twenty years. Now, can a 

 neat boarded fence, if only eight feet high, and to 

 last twenty years, be put up for less that six dol- 

 lars a rod ? I am convinced that it cannot ; and, 

 then, here is an expense for every twenty years, of 

 three hundred and forty-eight dollars. A Locust 

 fence, I allow, will last for ever ; but, then, what 



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