No. 11. 



Live Fences. 



357 



From the Transactions of the Essex Ag. Society. 

 On Live Fences. 



To the Committee on Live Fences: — 



Gentlemen, — In compliance with your re- 

 quest, that I should furnish you with a de- 

 tailed account of my various experiments in 

 the formation of " live fences," with their 

 results, I have the pleasure to send you the 

 following statement; only premising, that I 

 gave to each plant a fair and impartial trial, 

 and that the information I offer, has at least 

 the value of actual experience. 



It is now more than forty years since I 

 became convinced of the superiority, both as 

 regards durability and beauty, of live fences 

 over any other mode of enclosure in use 

 among us, and made it my endeavour to as- 

 certain what plant was best suited to the 

 purpose. 



I first tried the English hawthorn, but 

 found it would not bear our climate; the 

 long droughts frequent in our warm sum- 

 mers, materially injure its beauty; it is 

 often blighted, and loses its foliage early in 

 August, and even in the more favourable 

 seasons it assumes a wintry appearance in 

 September: it is disfigured by numerous 

 dead branches, which give it a ragged and 

 unthrifty appearance, even in its verdant 

 season; and is very subject to the attacks 

 of the borer, by which I have known a whole 

 hedge to be destroyed. This first hedge, 

 which measures about twenty rods, is still 

 standing in my orchard, but I have long 

 given it up as incorrigible, and it is not in- 

 cluded in the present measurement of my 

 hedges; and a second one with which I had 

 enclosed part of my garden, was only kept 

 from decay by subsequently interposing 

 young buckthorn plants alternately with 

 the hawthorns ; by this means it became a 

 good hedge ; but had it been all of buck- 

 thorns, it would have been still better. I 

 am so convinced of the unsuitableness of 

 the English thorn for our climate, that I 

 would not admit another hedge of it into 

 my grounds, if it could be done free of ex- 

 pense. My next experiment was with the 

 triple-thorned acacia. This is a very beau- 

 tiful plant when grown as an individual 

 tree, but it did not answer my expectations 

 for a hedge ; the plants ran up without in- 

 terlacing, and the thorns being mostly upon 

 the upper branches, the hedge was too open 

 at the bottom to be any protection to the 

 land it enclosed ; and it was besides, too 

 feeble a plant to bear our more severe win- 

 ters. 



I made my next trial with the crab-apple, 

 and here I failed entirely: a hedge which I 



formed of this, had nothing to recommend it 

 in any way. 



In the year 1808, I happened to have 

 some young plants which had come up from 

 the chance-scattered seeds of the American 

 buckthorn, or Rhamnus cartharticus, and 

 finding they made a good growth in the 

 nursery to which they had been removed, I 

 determined to try to form a hedge of them, 

 and I have been well pleased with the re- 

 sult. They were set out in 18(19, and very 

 soon became a fine hedge of about twenty 

 rods in length, which has remained so until 

 the present time ; not a single plant having 

 failed from it, nor have I ever known it to 

 be attacked by any insect. This hedge 

 being my first experiment with the buck- 

 thorn, I did not keep it headed down so 

 closely as I have since found it expedient to 

 do, and consequently it is not quite so im- 

 pervious at the bottom as some of my 

 younger hedges, which have been more se- 

 verely pruned. 



Being fully satisfied that I had at last 

 found the plant I wanted, I have since that 

 time, set out various hedges of it, at differ- 

 ent periods, until I can now measure 160 

 rods of them, all, in my opinion, good 

 hedges, — and I do not hesitate to pronounce 

 the buckthorn the most suitable plant for 

 the purpose, that I have ever met with. It 

 vegetates early in the spring, and retains 

 its verdure late in the autumn. I have 

 often seen it green after the snows had 

 fallen. Being a native plant, it is never in- 

 jured by our most intense cold, and its vi- 

 tality is so great, that the young plants may 

 be kept out of the ground for a long time, 

 or transported any distance without injury. 

 It never sends up any suckers, nor is it disfig- 

 ured by any dead wood ; it can be clipped 

 into any shape which the caprice or ingenu- 

 ity of the gardener may devise ; and being 

 pliable, it may be trained into an arch or 

 over a passage way, as easily as a vine ; it 

 needs no plashing or interlacing, the natu- 

 ral growth of the plants being sufficiently 

 interwoven. It is never cankered by un- 

 skilful clipping, but will bear the knife to 

 any degree. During the last winter, I found 

 one of my hedges had grown too high, cast- 

 ing too much shadow over a portion of my 

 garden, and wishing to try how much it 

 would endure, I directed my gardener to 

 cut it down within four feet of the ground. 

 This was done in mid-winter, and not with- 

 out some misgivings on my own part, and 

 much discouraging advice from others; but 

 it leafed out as early in the spring as the 

 other hedges, and is now a mass of verdure. 

 I have been applied to for young plants, by 

 persons who have seen and admired my 



