English Hedges and Gardens The hedge is so important a
part of both the English land- scape and the English garden that we have been inclined to curb a good many trees and bushes to its limitations. There are many illustrations. For example, a writer in the magazine of the Men of the Trees gives some account of the magnificence of a single specimen of Cupressus macrocarpa. Now I suppose no plant has so grievously disappointed so many gardeners who have planted it, and continue to plant it, as a quickly growing hedge. Almost always a certain proportion of the pruned plants die or die back, and a whole hedge may disappear. It is vastly inferior to, say, Thuya lobbii, which is very nearly as quick and peculiarly resistant to all conditions, whether of weather or soil. How seldom either this beautiful Cupressus is planted as a single tree! The laurel, very handsome as a single bush, is equally maltreated and equally rebellious as a hedge or in a close shrubbery. Similarly, yew hedges are quite spoiled by too close planting. The yew, after all, is a forest tree. Our ancestors planted them sometimes as much as 20 feet apart! As to the Men of the Trees (The Gate, Abbotsbury, Dorset), I see they have produced a calendar with very beautiful illustrations, a diary and an anthology.
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