CHAPTER XIV. 



A New and Cheap Method of making Garden Walls. 



GARDEN without good walls well covered with fertile 

 fruit trees is in our climate a very imperfect sort of 

 garden indeed^ if the production of first-class fruit be a 

 chief object with the owner. It is true that of late years some few 

 have declaimed against garden walls, and said. Let us do away with 

 them and build glass houses instead ; but such people are chiefly 

 those who know nothing of what may be done with walls by a 

 good cultivator, and those who have completely failed from want of 

 skill in making anything of their own. The advice may be good 

 in cold northern districts and places where fruit cannot be ripened 

 against walls, but to recommend doing away with garden walls 

 generally in this country is simply folly. Walls make up for a bad 

 climate when the trees on them are well managed ; but if neglect 

 occurs, and those shoots or branches which should be so spread as 

 to enjoy all the light and warmth possible are allowed to grow forth 

 wild, and perhaps receive but an annual rough-pruning, or whatever 

 else may be the form of the neglect, it is clear that a garden wall 

 soon becomes an eyesore instead of an object of beauty and utility. 

 And I question very much if anything connected with rural life 

 presents such a combination of the two last qualities as a well- 

 managed garden wall — covered with flowers in spring, and fruit 

 equally beautiful in autumn. For some years past garden walls 

 have been comparatively neglected by the gardening public gene- 



