184 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 
or lavender, there is a well defined line of descent. 
Earthworks are of course the most primitive form of 
defense. Outside of these, the Spaniards at St. Au¬ 
gustine planted “several rows of palmetto trees . . . 
very close”: their pointed leaves making “so many 
chevaux de frieze ” which were an impenetrable bar¬ 
rier. This was not a garden inclosure, to be sure, but 
protected the entire town on the land side. Hedges 
of cacti, grown much higher than a man’s head, not in¬ 
frequently inclose Spanish gardens, however, and afford 
one of the most perfect defensive treatments that Na¬ 
ture offers. The lower California Missions show them; 
but they are suitable only for broad spaces. The little 
city of St. Augustine, with its narrow streets, could 
spare room for nothing wider than straight garden 
walls, made like the houses, of coquina—that curious 
soft white shell-and-coral “stone” of Florida. These, 
as high as the first story of the dwellings, and plastered, 
provided an exquisite background for the oleanders and 
the roses and the jessamine which grew against them, 
inside in the gardens. 
Gardens in Elizabeth’s time in England were some¬ 
times inclosed with walls of brick, sometimes with 
palings of dead thorn or willow, and sometimes with 
living or “quick” thorn plashings. This use of both 
dead wood and of the quick, or living, gave the ancient 
folkname to England’s white thorn or haw—“quick” 
