In the Garden One or two days of sunshine have
been helpful this week, and I have put a major change into action. It is to move a ten-year-old yew hedge about eight feet to the left, thus bringing two large flower-beds out of a long !pass walk and into the borders of a lower terrace-lawn. The job took two days, with two men at work. Nobody would know the change had been made, for, by careful lifting of the roots in blocks of earth, and setting in a trench, we managed to keep the square hedge with its geometry unruffled. The beds have been planted with roses.
V. Sackville West has a lovely passage about yew hedges in her long poem, The Garden, which I must refrain from quoting. A correspondent complains to me about the optimism of this poet (having visited her garden) on this matter of growing yew. The complaint is that a hedge planted in 1935 on sandy soil is still only eighteen inches high. On such soil, then, I would recommend something more accommodating, such ac the now popular Lonicera nitida, which grows almost overnight, and can be set from clippings. It has a tiny rounded leaf, and can be kert as a thin, dense hedge ; an advantage in a small garden. It is also unselfish to plants grown in the bed close to its roots. Yew hedges, of course, should not be set where cattle and sheep can get at them.
We begin to think now about sowing under glass the half-hardy perennials for bedding out in May. The single, deep blue petunia is a decorative bedder. It has a royal hue, the very murex. The snapdragon. or antirrhinum, has beconie a cult in itself, like roses or lilies. I find on my soil of Hastings bed that it is liable to rust, especially later in the summer. Yet it is supposed to thrive on clay. This, with other signs. indicates that my soil is deficient in lime. The condition of snapdragons in a garden can be taken as a symptom in this matter. It is wort" persevering to get a good bed of these long-flowering plants. for their
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