THE JOYOUS ART OF GARDENING 



there, it's ugly, you know it, and during eight months in the 

 year it shows plainly and every one knows it. For city gar- 

 dens there should be walls of the same material as that of 

 which the house is built. If the house is of wood, then a fence, 

 if you like, but one of good design, not a bill-board to be hidden. 

 Some of the older fences were dignified and admirable, with 

 pilasters of good proportion, tall enough to give a good effect. 



Some of the best garden walls and fences in this country 

 are to be seen in Charleston, S. C. Here is sometimes a wall 

 reheved by blind arches — the bricks in the intervening spaces 

 being Only one foot thick and covered with plaster, and against 

 the walls are blossoming fruit-trees, pomegranates, Japanese 

 plums, roses, and oleanders, and over them grows ivy — ^it's a 

 lovely setting for a city garden. 



As a substitute for the wall or the fence comes the liAdng 

 wall of green — the hedge. In this country we have no hedge 

 that exactly takes the place of the English yew, which cannot 

 endure our variable climate. In fact, the chief objection to a 

 hedge in America is a chmatic one — that there may be a day 

 of judgment when two or three plants of a twenty-year-old 

 hedge are, after hving so long, killed in an unusually difficiilt 

 winter. And then there is the hole ! To find plants of the same 

 size is not easy, unless one has planted and maintained a re- 

 serve for just such an emergency. 



The usual hedges in the North are arbor- vitse, spruce, hem- 

 lock, California privet. The Japanese holly, of which much 

 was hoped, is not altogether trustworthy north of New York. 

 In the South, where a much wider range is possible — ^ilex or 

 magnolia can be used. A wonderful hedge could be made of 

 camellias, though I never have seen them used for such a pur- 

 pose. 



At Cornish, in New Hampshire, Saint-Gaudens made tall 



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