THE AMATEUR GARDEN 



of New Orleans revisited in January impel to 

 protest against every needless submission to 

 the tyrannies of frost and of a gardening art 

 or non-art, a submission which only in the out- 

 door embellishment of the home takes winter 

 supinely, abjectly. 



This garden of a hope's dream covers but 

 three ordinary town lots. Often it shrinks to 

 but one without asking for any notable change 

 of plan. Following all the lines, the hard, law 

 lines, that divide it from its neighbors and the 

 street, there runs, waist-high on its street front, 

 shoulder-high on its side bounds, a close ever- 

 green hedge of hemlock spruce. In its young 

 way this hedge has been handsome from in- 

 fancy; though still but a few years old it gives, 

 the twelvemonth round, a note both virile and 

 refined in color, texture and form, and if the 

 art that planted it and the care that keeps it 

 do not decay neither need the hedge for a cen- 

 tury to come. Against the intensest cold this 

 side of Labrador it is perfectly hardy, is 

 trimmed with a sloping top to shed snows 

 whose weight might mutilate it, and can be 



188 



