A hedge five clear feet high may be got in six years from the day of planting. And, now let us see what it has cost to get this fence round my proposed garden, which, as will be seen under the next head, is to be 300 feet long and 150 feet wide, and which is, of course, to have 900 feet length of hedge.



The plants are to be a foot apart in the line, and there are to be two lines; consequently, there will be required 1500 plants, or suppose it to be two thousand. I think it will be strange indeed, if those plants cannot be raised and sold, at two years old, for two dollars a thousand.

I mean fine stout plants; for, if your plants be poor, little slender things that have never been transplanted, but just pulled up out of the spot where they were sown, your hedge will be a year longer before it come to a fence, and will never, without extraordinary care, be so good a hedge; for, the plants ought all to be as nearly as possible of equal size; else some get the start of others, subdue them, and keep them down, and this makes an uneven hedge, with weak parts in it. And, when the plants are first pulled up out of the seed bed, they are too small to enable you clearly to ascertain this inequality of size.

When the plants are taken out of the seed bed and transplanted into a nursery, they are assorted by the nursery men, who are used to the business. The strong ones are transplanted into one place; and the weak ones into another: so that, when they come to be used for a hedge, they are already equalized.

If you can get plants three years old they are still better. They will make a complete hedge sooner; but, if they be two years old, have been transplanted, and, are at the bottom, as big as a large goose quill, they are every thing that is required.

The cost of the plants is, then, four dollars. The pruning of the roots and the planting is done, in England, for about three half pence a rod; that is to say, about three cents. Let us allow twelve cents here. I think I could earn two dollars a day at this work; but, let us allow enough.

In 900 feet there are 54 rod and a few feet over: and, therefore, the planting of the hedge would cost about seven dollars, To keep it clean from weeds would require about two days work in a year for five or six years: twelve dollars more.

To do the necessary clipping during the same time, would require about thirty dollars, if it were done in an extraordinary good manner, and with a pair of Garden Shears.

Of the beauty of such a hedge it is impossible for any one, who has not seen it, to form an idea: contrasted with a wooden, or even a brick fence, it is like the land of Canaan compared with the deserts of Arabia. The leaf is beautiful in hue as well as in shape. It is one of the very earliest in the spring. It preserves its bright green during the summer heats.

The branches grow so thick and present thorns so numerous, and those so sharp, as to make the fence wholly impenetrable. The shelter it gives in the early part of spring, and the shade it gives (on the other side of the garden) in the heat of summer, are so much more effectual than those given by wood or brick or stone fences, that there is no comparison between them.

The Primrose and the Violet, which are the earliest of all the flowers of the fields in England, always make their first appearance under the wings of the Haw Thorn.

Goldsmith, in describing female innocence and simplicity, says: "Sweet as Primrose peeps beneath the Thorn." This Haw Thorn is the favorite plant of England: it is seen as a flowering shrub in all gentlemen's pleasure grounds; it is the constant ornament of paddocks and parks; the first appearance of its blossoms is hailed by old and young as the sign of pleasant weather; its branches of flowers are emphatically called "May," because, according to the Old Style, its time of blooming was about the first of May, which, in England is called "May Day;" in short, take away the Haw Thorn, and you take away the greatest beauty of the English fields and gardens, and not a small one from English rural poetry.