California Privet 
THE IDEAL OF BEAUTY AND UTILITY—HOW TO PLANT AND KEEP A 
HEDGE—SOME DESIRABLE VARIETIES AND THEIR SPECIFIC USES 
by Grace Tabor 
H EDGES are, of all boundary marks, the easiest to acquire and 
the least expensive; hence they afford us the readiest means 
to-day of altering our open-to-the-world-generally condition to that 
ideal of home enclosure that is slowly but surely beginning to 
prevail. And they afford us, too, a means for this transition that 
shall make it seem less radical than would the erection of walls and 
fences—for a hedge comes modestly and insinuatingly upon the 
scene, barely a line break¬ 
ing the level of monotony 
at first, and growing very 
gradually from this to a 
thing of form and positive 
characteristics. 
We scarcely realize even 
the least of the hedge’s pos¬ 
sibilities here in America, 
however, for we are not ad¬ 
vanced further than the 
very doubtful low barrier 
of privet — after all not 
wholly effective, handled 
our way, as a barrier; and 
very often of very little 
merit as a decoration, 
thanks to that same way of 
handling. Of the possibili¬ 
ties of native shrubs — 
notably the bramble and 
honey locust — in the con¬ 
struction of actually im¬ 
penetrable boundary marks, 
we have no conception ; nor 
have we profited by the ex¬ 
ample of some of our early- 
settler ancestors, and planted “quick” or the living barrier of 
English hawthorn. 
Almost anything at all may make a hedge, for, of course, the 
term means simply that the plants are set in a line. But there is 
one characteristic essential to a good hedge plant, whether it is to 
be sheared or allowed to grow in natural fashion; this is density 
at the ground. The one great difficulty to be overcome in all 
hedges, whether sheared or natural, is the open base. No hedge 
that shows it is to be regarded as a success, although, of course, 
any unshearecl shrubbery growth is bound to have a tendency 
towards it. For this reason, varieties that sprout freely from the 
roots bv nature, throwing 
up a mass of shoots rather 
than one or two or three 
stems, are to be chosen for 
hedge planting. And plants 
of small size that may be 
thickly set are a wiser se¬ 
lection than those of great¬ 
er maturity, whose root and 
branch growth has reached 
proportions that make close 
setting in the row impos¬ 
sible. 
For the defensive out¬ 
lining of a property, a 
thorny hedge has advan¬ 
tages which make its choice 
usual in lands where hedges 
prevail. But nothing in 
America as yet represents, 
either practically or senti¬ 
mentally, what the haw¬ 
thorn represents to the 
English ; yet we have here 
a plant well qualified to 
take its place, save that it 
lacks in showiness some¬ 
what, its blossoms being rather inconspicuous. This is the honey 
locust, or tri-thorned acacia, native over a large portion of the 
United States and adapted to all portions. It is a tree, of course — 
so is the English haw — but, planted in its infancy at a height 
Hydrangea paniculata has form as well as profuse bloom. The floral hedge, of course, 
requires no cutting. It is most effective as a boundary within the garden proper 
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