ESPALIER KAILS. 93 



grasp is on the rope when their companions have 

 been washed away. 



Doubting not, from the above considerations, 

 that you will judge favourably of espaliers, and give 

 them a place in your garden, the following direc- 

 tions may be of use for their successful and econo- 

 mical cultivation. Have the ground well trenched 

 and manured (see wall department), and plant the 

 trees three or four feet from the walk, and twice as 

 near to one another as they should afterwards be 

 when full grown. The reasons for this close plant- 

 ing are, as formerly stated, that the value of a few 

 crops is more than the expence of the trees, your 

 rails are sooner covered, and when the trees begin 

 to meet and incommode one another you can then, 

 having ascertained their various qualities, give 

 scope to the best, by diminishing or rooting out 

 the less worthy. For one or two years, after the 

 meeting has taken place, you may delay the pain 

 of execution by allowing the young shoots to pass 

 one another on the opposite sides of the rails. 



To incur no more expence than is necessary, the 

 stakes may be placed two feet apart, in which case 

 the annual shoots will require to be conducted from 

 one resting place to another, by pieces of lath, or 

 wild brier, or willow of two years' growth. These 

 conductors require a firm and separate tying, dis- 

 tinct from that which fastens more loosely the 

 living wood; they thus give strength to the rails^ 

 and provide for straighter training than is com- 

 monly done by having the stakes twice as thickly 



