408 Old Time Gardens 
The traveller Kalm found Privet hedges in Penn- 
sylvania in 1760. In Scotland Privet is called 
Primprint. Primet and Primprivet were other old 
names. Box was called Primpe. These were all 
derivative of prim, meaning precise. Our Privet 
hedges, new as they are, are of great beauty and 
satisfaction, and soon will rival the English Yew 
hedges. 
I have never yet seen the garden in which there 
was not some boundary or line which could be filled 
to advantage by a hedge. In garden great or garden 
small, the hedge should ever have a place. Often 
a featureless garden, blooming well, yet somehow 
unattractive, has been completely transformed by 
the planting of hedges. They seem, too, to give 
such an orderly aspect to the garden. In level 
countries hedges are specially valuable. I cannot 
understand why some denounce clipped hedges and 
trees as against nature. A clipped hedge is just as 
natural as the cut grass of a lawn, and is closely akin 
to it. Others think hedges “too set” ; to me their 
finality is their charm. 
Hedges need to be well kept to be pleasing. 
Chaucer in his day in praising a “ hegge ” said 
that : — 
“ Every branche and leaf must grow by mesure 
Pleine as a bord, of an height by and by.” 
In England, hedge-clipping has ever been a garden- 
ing art. 
In the old English garden the topiarist was an 
important functionary. Besides his clipping shears 
