In the Garden The publication of a small book on
garden hedges has produced a host of criticisms, with which I cannot help disagreeing both positively and negatively, on many points. Here are a few. Beech makes so fine a hedge by itself up to any height you please that there can be no good reason for mixing it with thorn. Hornbeam is likened to beech because the leaves are alike. There is of course all the difference in winter time between the bright coppery beech leaves and the dull limper hornbeam. It is perhaps true that cotoneaster simonsii is a too widely neglected hedge plant. For myself, though I admire the bush and have planted it freely, it makes too thin a hedge by itself. As to omissions, if anyone wants an evergreen hedge of good size in quick time I should say that thuja haastii is very hard to beat, certainly preferable to more popular forms of hedge of this class. On one point we are all agreed: the best of all evergreen hedges is holly, with yew as runner-up. Among rather less usual garden hedges my own favourite is a mixture of barberries, especially Darwinii and Stenophylla. The one barberry to avoid is the white-stemmed dictyophyllunt on account of its rampancy.
W. BEACH THOMAS
Previous page
