10 



THE AMERICAN GARDENER. [Chap 



garden all large trees ought to be kept at a distance 

 of thirty or forty yards. For, the shade of them i^- 

 injurious, and their roots a great deal more injuri 

 ous, to every plant growing within the influence of 

 those roots. It is a common but very erroneous 

 notion, in England, that the trees, which grow in 

 the hedges that divide the fields, do injury by their 

 shade only. I had a field of transplanted Ruta 

 Baga, in the hedge on the North West side of which 

 there were five large spreading oak-trees, at some 

 distance from each other. Opposite each of these 

 trees, w^hich could not shade the Ruta Baga much, 

 there was a piece of the Ruta Baga, in nearly a 

 semi-circular form, in which the plants never grew 

 to any size, though those in all the rest of the field 

 were so fine as to draw people from a great distance 

 to look at them. One gentleman, who came out of 

 Sussex, and who had been a farmer all his life-time, 

 was struck with the sight of these semi-circles ; and, 

 looking over the hedge, into a field of wheat, which 

 had a ditch between it and the hedge, and seeing 

 that the wheat, though shaded by the trees, was 

 very little affected by them, he discovered, that it 

 was the roots and not the branches that produced 

 the mischief The ditch^ which had been for ages 

 in the same place, had prevented the roots of the 

 trees from going into the field where the w^heat was 

 growing. The ground where the Ruta Baga was 

 growing had been well ploughed and manured ; and 

 the plants had not been in the ground more than 

 three months; yet, such was the power of the roots 

 of the trees, and so quickly did it operate, that it 

 almost wholly destroyed the Ruta Baga that stood 

 within its reach. Grdss^ which matts the ground 

 all over with its roots, and does not demand much 

 food from any depth, does not suflfer much from the 



