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-vite 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 
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