158 Improved Mode of Growing 



adopted, and therefore I advise the general planting of these more 

 contracted forms. Nothing can be neater alongside garden walks 

 than lines such as these trained on the trellis alluded to. There is 

 no shaking about of rough irons or wooden beams, no falling dowu 

 or loosening of the wires ; the fruit is firmly attached and safe from 

 gales, the wood is fully exposed, and the trellis thus well covered 

 forms an elegant dividing line in a garden. The best way to place 

 them is at from three to six feet from the edge of the walk, and if 

 in the space between the espalier and the walk a line of the cordons 

 elsewhere recommended be established, the effect and result will 

 prove very good indeed. In some cases where large quantities of 

 fruit are required, it may be desirable to run them across the squares 

 at a distance of fifteen or eighteen feet apart. And here again I 

 mention the Imperial garden at Versailles, not by any means be- 

 cause it is the Imperial garden — it has many faults, and is inferior 

 in not a few ways to a first-class English forcing garden — but the 

 system of trellising there is such as no horticulturist could fail to 

 admire. There is one large square completely devoted to those 

 trellises for espaliers as we would call them (the French apply 

 the term espalier to wall trees) ; and the foreman informed me 

 that they constructed this excellent trellising for about one franc 

 a yard run or less. The principle is quite simple. However, as 

 the system of wiring now beginning to be generally adopted in 

 French gardens is so excellent and so well calculated to improve 

 and add to the comfort of our gardens that if deserves to be fully 

 described, we will devote a little space to the French mode of wiring 

 walls, making trellises for fruit trees, &c., in the portion of the book 

 devoted to horticultural implements, appliances, &c. 



M. Hardy, tlie head gardener at Versailles, is the son of the 

 celebrated writer on fruit trees of diat name, and has had much 

 experience in fruit growing. I here give his written opinion ou 

 the trellises and forms of tree herein illustrated. " These trellises 

 are the cheapest as well as the most ornamental that we have yet 

 succeeded in making, and tlie trees which I plant against them are 

 of that form which I prefer to all others, for promptly furnishing 



