i6o THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vii 



old. Besides white-thorn, privet, and yew, the 

 sweet-briar, pyracantha, and holly were commonly 

 used for hedges. Holly was the special favourite 

 of Evelyn, because of its power of defence and 

 the sheen of its leaves. At Sayes Court he had 

 a holly-hedge 400 feet long, 9 feet high, and 5 

 feet thick. This hedge was his special pride 

 till Peter the Great came to live at Deptford, 

 and formed a habit of amusing himself after his 

 labours in shipbuilding by charging the hedge 

 in a wheel-barrow. Evelyn says he had seen 

 hedges of holly 20 feet high " kept upright, and 

 the gilded sort budded low, and in two or three 

 places one above another, shorn and fashioned 

 into columns and pilasters, architectonically 

 shaped and at due distance, than which 

 nothing can possibly be more pleasant, the berry 

 adorning the intercolumniations with scarlet 

 festoons and encarpa." The worst possible bush 

 for a hedge is the laurel. It starts with great 

 promise, and everything goes well for two or 

 three years, after which it gets thin and straggly 

 underneath, and becomes shabbier and shabbier 

 every year. The only chance with it is to cut 

 it and clip it without remorse. In some old- 

 fashioned gardens, where fruit-trees and flowers 

 are allowed to grow together, - beautiful hedges 

 are formed by apple-trees grown as espaliers.^ 



^ In Mr. Robinson's Parks and Gardcm of Paris there is a useful 

 description of the French methoils of forming trellis-hedges of pear and 

 ■ nipple and other fruit trees. 



