Fruit Tree Protection, Cordons, etc. 383 



reasonable means, display tlieir walls without any noticeable coping 

 to throw off cold rains and sleet, and protect the trees from frost. 

 In many cases the very imperfect protection of some kind of net- 

 ting is afforded to the peach trees (which do not require it so badly 

 as other kinds), and all the rest are " left to nature'' with a vengeance. 

 In the case of ordinary standard or orchard trees, things must 

 be left to take their chance ; but it is little less than disgraceful 

 that this should be the rule with trees for which we go to consider- 

 able expense to build walls and pay constant attention to. By plant- 

 ing orchards with crops beneath the trees, as the London market- 

 gardeners do, we insure a crop in any case ; and paying but 

 little or no attention to the trees when failure does occur, the loss 

 is not great. Not so with the wall and garden trees. Their cul- 

 ture is little better than an expensive delusion until we take care to 

 protect them, so that a crop will be secured every year. The pre- 

 sent system is not only deplorable from the direct loss of fruit that 

 it occasions, but also from the fact that the trees, having nothing 

 to bear during a season when the blossoms are destroyed, make 

 wood so gross and infertile, that, even if the following spring prove 

 a favourable one, there may be a poor crop or none at all from want 

 of fruit buds. Walls are expensive; wall trees, if properly managed, 

 are expensive too, for they, unlike an orchard tree, require skilled 

 -attention, and a great deal of it ; and they can only pay by taking 

 care to guard the fruit buds from death by frost. There is no finer 

 climate than ours for the perfecting of wall fruit; the difficulty 

 presented is to get the fruit well set and out of danger of frost. We 

 have good seasons and bad seasons — ^years in which the blossom 

 opens early and is killed, years in which it opens late and is killed 

 also, and others in which some kinds of fruit escape without injury ; 

 but the right way to avert loss of crops is to give up all guessing 

 about good or bad seasons, realize that we are always liable to such 

 a destructive spring as the present, and make such arrangements as 

 will render ourselves quite fearless of the like. 



The destruction is apparent in the best-managed gardens as well 

 as the worst. The following extracts from the report of the able 



