I2O HEDGES, WINDBREAKS, SHELTERS, ETC. 



shall always have this thought foremost: Does that 

 which we do express a rational idea? 



The chief danger with amateur planters is that, 

 bewitched with the sense of the beautiful, they will 

 wish to do too much. They wish everything beau- 

 tiful that they see, or hear of, planted on their own 

 grounds. Trees and shrubs are crowded together, 

 and nothing is complete. Care and worry set in 

 with dissatisfaction. A beautiful hedge becomes 

 the ugliest thing in the world if not needed. It 

 might as well be in the parlor as to be crowded into 

 an over-full lawn. In and for itself alone it is beau- 

 tiful; but that beauty is spoiled by being out of rela- 

 tion to other things. As a rule it should always sug- 

 gest utility. It is closely associated with drives and 

 walks and shelter, and these are never to be put in 

 for mere ornament. Therefore not a rod of wind- 

 break, or hedge, that is not needed right where it 

 is placed, should ever be planted. 



To create a sympathy with nature is the highest 

 object of any book that deals with a section of nature. 

 Nothing good can be done without it. We may stir 

 up an enthusiasm for planting something, but the 

 danger is that nothing exists in the minds of the 

 planters, corresponding to what they propose to 

 create outside of them and around them. A thou- 

 sand hedges may eventuate in nine hundred 

 wretched, neglected, obtrusive nuisances, struggling 

 across the land, and only one hundred really good 

 hedges. I should like to excite a mild passion for 

 cutting as well as planting; a desire to remove the 

 disagreeable, the offensive, and the idiotic. But in 

 both directions, go slowly. Study first; experiment 



