188 HOW TO PLAN THE HOME GROUNDS 



them tolerable is to either make them a solid barrier 

 of close-growing vines, or to construct them of wires 

 which, at a little distance, are entirely invisible. Such 

 fences may be made successfully of locust posts joined 

 by bars of inch gas-piping, or they may be made of wire 

 and small wooden stakes, or iron anchor-posts. 



In the eyes of many, the picket fence, in all its forms 

 of both iron and wood, is a contrivance that tends to 

 produce a disagreeable effect, because its upright bars 

 are apt to multiply and confuse the detached glimmers 

 of view we get through the regularly intermittent open 

 spaces. If the picket fence is covered largely with vines, 

 as the horizontal bar form ought to be, there can be 

 little objection to it. In this respect it is easy to rec- 

 ognize the superiority of the stone wall when partially 

 vine-covered, for the variety of contrast between the 

 surface of the stone wall and the leaves of the vines and 

 there should always be stone wall exposed will make 

 an effect of changing beauty that a vine-covered fence 

 cannot hope to equal. 



It is impossible to commend too highly the use, along 

 walls and fences, of what may be termed hedge-rows, 

 and which are actually shrub-groups. Hedge-row seems 

 to be a good term to employ, because it indicates a cer- 

 tain wild character that greatly increases the attraction 

 of masses of shrubs and trees along a stone wall or 

 fence, and although this wild appearance has been prob- 

 ably secured by setting afresh native shrubs, or kinds 

 allied to them in habit, and planting them with consider- 

 able art, it is the chief advantage of the arrangement 

 that the shrubs will seem to have grown there them- 

 selves, and not to have been imposed, just at that point, 

 as an artificial barrier. 



