SIX] WINDBREAKS AND HEDGES 



trimming. If you will follow these hints carefully, 

 you will hardly ever lose an evergreen bush or tree. 



Deciduous hedges need to be trimmed twice a 

 year, first in April or May, and again in July or 

 August. Cut, each time, as close as you can to the 

 old wood, for the hedge will gradually gain in diam- 

 eter in spite of trimming. One inch each year 

 makes in ten years twenty inches more of spread; 

 and if carelessly you leave three inches, your hedge 

 will have widened, in the same space of time, sixty 

 inches, or five feet. So you see there is danger that 

 you will make a nuisance instead of an ornament. 

 Evergreen hedges must, however, on no account be 

 cut but once a year, and that once must be in 

 March or April — just before the new growth. More 

 harm is done to fine evergreen hedges by cutting 

 them in the summer and autumn, than by all other 

 causes combined. Again and again people ask. 

 What is the matter with my arbor-vitse hedge, or 

 my hemlock.^ Inquiry shows that they have 

 pruned in the summer, thus cutting away the new 

 growth, which nature was preparing for winter 

 protection. 



A hedge is ornamental, not only from the amount 

 of shearing it gets, but sometimes from a modicum 



[K3] 



