Authors: Margery Fish
A plant I like and have in various parts of the garden is
Thygelius capensis.
This too is evergreen, with dark glossy leaves. It is often used as a bush and I don’t think it makes a very satisfactory one as it grows unevenly and needs constant checking. But plant it against a sheltered wall and it will reach five or six feet. Its large sprays of tubular flowers, brick red in colour, are generously given and come in the late summer and autumn when there is too much lavender and yellow in the garden. If happy this plant is inclined to encroach on less assertive plants, and has to be curbed. Less invasive is its more refined brother
Thygelius aequalis.
It does not grow so quickly and its flowers are longer and paler, and delicately touched with green.
Eucalyptus Gunnii
is growing well against the south wall of the cowhouse. This is the hardiest of all the eucalyptus family and has come through several hard winters very well. It needs tying back firmly, as I discovered when to my horror a gale snapped off the top. In brilliant sunshine the fluttering leaves make delicate shadow effects on the wall. Its grey green foilage is delightful for decoration and lasts a very long time in water. When flowers are scarce early in the year I use the new leaf tips of clear pink instead of flowers in the house.
After clothing the walls, Walter turned his attention to hedges. We had our high wall on one side and we wanted something equally high and impenetrable on the other side and along a low wall beyond the house on the south side. Our thoughts turned to
Cupressus macrocarpa.
We were warned that it had a limited life, in fact, just when we were considering our hedge the local doctor showed us a magnificent hedge he had planted at the back of his tennis court the year his son was born. That year his son was thirteen and the hedge was beginning to die. Of course we did not heed and we planted mac-rocarpa along the road beyond the house and between ourselves and the next house. The hedge flourished. It was well clipped every August and gave us no trouble. But in 1951, thirteen years after it was planted I noticed several of the trees were dying. Our hedge hasn’t made such a wholesale job of it as the doctor’s did but I have two nasty gaps where four or five trees had to be dug out. Now I have started a new hedge of
Lonicera nitida
behind so that I shan’t have to wait too long for a screen after the rest of the macrocarpa die.
I have heard many explanations for this behaviour of the macrocarpa. I used to think it had only a limited life because its roots found something they didn’t like when they got down below a certain level. A nurseryman has at last solved the problem for me. It is the regular clipping that does it. Macrocarpa, unlike yew, needs to breathe through its trunk to survive. The tight clipping makes the foliage denser and denser and cuts off all air from the centre of the tree. The correct way to deal with macrocarpa is to thin as well as trim. The trained gardener pecks out little tufts here and there with his secateurs and lets in air. All shaped cupressus trees should be treated in the same way, and it is remarkable how they respond to such treatment.
The one thing I did directly we bought the house was to plant a hedge parallel with the back of the house to hide the back door and kitchen. My sister gave me enough little plants of
Lonicera nitida
to start us off and these I planted with the idea of screening entirely the back premises. It is difficult now to understand our point of view and remarkable that things could have changed so completely in such a short time. For in those days it was unthinkable that ladies and gentlemen enjoying themselves in the garden should be disturbed by the sight of tradesmen delivering food at the back door. We even put ‘Tradesmen’ on the back gate! And the lower half of the window at the pantry sink, which overlooked the garden, was discreetly glazed with ground glass. No one must see the maid washing up, but it never occurred to us, the architect or the builder how dull it was for the poor girl to be shut off like that. When the war came and I spent hours at the sink I adopted my sister’s suggestion and had clear glass put in that window. I enjoyed the garden and planned my next job while I washed the breakfast things. I got a lot of good ideas too, even if I did finish the war with hardly one of our original cups or plates!
The little hedge had a difficult childhood. My sister had generously given us small cuttings that she had struck for herself and they were very tiny to face life with such hazards. Early in the spring the builders took possession and we could no longer live in the house. Pipes for central heating, boards, bricks and all the other things that go with building were heaped everywhere, and I shall never cease to marvel at the tenacity with which that little hedge stuck to life. My aristocratic gardening friends refer to it as ‘the common hedge’, but I know nothing else that would have survived and prospered. We used to drive down from London to see how the builders were getting on, and the first thing I did when we arrived on the scene was to walk over to my hedge and remove the worst of the debris. Very soon the builders began to realize where my affections were centred and as soon as we drove in at the gate there would be a scurry to free the hedge from its encumbrance of building material.
With cuttings from that little hedge I made all our other hedges. To break the garden we planted small hedges in various places. One went across the top garden between the flowers and a small orchard, another at right angles to screen the small vegetable garden, and two
rectangular enclosures were hedged at the back of the malthouse to hide heaps of compost, manure, peat and leaf mould.
The garden high-brows may sneer at ‘the common hedge’ but it really is the easiest and most accommodating hedge material I know. Whenever we decided we’d like a hedge all I had to do was to prepare the ground, put in a line (I tied knots in my line at nine-inch intervals for sowing broad beans and planting hedges) and then stick in my cuttings. It doesn’t seem to matter at what time of the year one takes cuttings but they should be of hard wood. I generally use cuttings of about nine inches in length, as straight as possible and after taking off all the side branches from the bottom half push that part into the soil.
The most important thing when taking cuttings is to see that the earth is pressed as firmly as possible against the cutting, particularly the base from which the tiny roots will soon appear. If they find kind mother earth ready to receive them these little roots take heart and venture further, but if they meet a vacuum they become discouraged. In heavy, lumpy soil it is always safer to use sand or sand and peat. Such a mixture makes an inviting reception for the infant roots, but it must be pressed as tightly as possible to the cutting, starting at the bottom. Some people use a small dibber for this but I feel safer with my fingers, as I know what I am doing. For a screening hedge, such as that used round a compost heap, I put in the cuttings in a single row, nine inches apart, but for a wider, more important hedge, say in front of a garden, a double row, staggered, with a foot between each cutting, is better. After watering I press down the earth on each side, then cut off the tops of the cuttings to encourage side growth.
I find that
Lonicera nitida
roots with the slightest excuse, in fact it can be a nuisance because if any little piece is left on the bed after trimming the hedge, it will root. I suffered badly from this until we started using a wide piece of hessian on each side of the hedge to catch all the trimmings.
We made a mistake with our first hedge in not cutting it down more drastically. We were so anxious for it to grow high enough to hide that disgraceful back door that it wasn’t trimmed properly for a long time, merely cut level. The consequence is that it did not grow thick at the bottom. After twelve years it was nearly four feet wide at the top but only a foot in width at the roots. Though we kept it well clipped the nature of the plant is not equal to the strain of supporting so much flesh. It waved about in the wind, quivering like a jelly, and when there was no wind the line was floppy and undulating. To bring it back it had to be cut down to two feet in height, and cut back so that the top is slightly narrower than the base, and it will continue to be trimmed in this tapering fashion. The cutting back process is not pretty. For several months there were only bare branches to be seen, with horrid maimed stumps, and I received many condolences on the death of my hedge. I explained I had done it myself and I was certain the disfigurement was only temporary. It was during the winter that we dealt so drastically with it, and sure enough in the spring tiny leaves began to appear on those bare branches, and very soon it was as green as ever and needed clipping again. None of the other hedges were as bad as this one, as they were trimmed earlier in their youth, but all have a tendency to get too wide at the top and now we are very firm with them.
Heavy snow is liable to make temporary havoc of
Lonicera nitida
and some people cut their hedges like a roof instead of flat to avoid this trouble.
One has always to take the rough with the smooth, and the advantage of a quick growing hedge means the disadvantage of constant clipping. Four times a year is the minimum required and in between it may need a slight hair cut if one wants to be particularly trim for a particular occasion. If one has only a small hedge a good way of keeping it in check is to cover the sides and top with wire netting and trim down to that. It wouldn’t be possible to use an electric trimmer on a hedge so treated and therefore it is only practicable on a scale that can be covered by hand clipping. An electric hedge clipper is a great boon for hedges such as mine and I don’t know what we should do without it. It makes a better job of the trimming with straighter lines and more clean-cut edges.
Lonicera nitida
is the most obliging hedge material. It doesn’t mind being shaped like yew, and I have seen extremely good birds and animals cut from it. It makes a very good little edging hedge instead of box, and can be kept just as small as a box hedge. Some of the cottages in this village have trained it into green porches by dint of careful and regular trimming, and I know one house where it has been grown as a great solid block of close green over six feet high for a screen. In fact you can use it in any way you want but you must go on trimming it regularly.
A lavender hedge can be grown just as easily, although not so quickly as a lonicera one. Cuttings pushed into the soil root very easily. When making either a lonicera or lavender hedge it is a good plan to have a little cache of spare plants in an odd corner. Some of the hedge cuttings may be obstinate and refuse to root and then you have a reserve of the same sized plants to fill in the gaps. Santolina makes a delightful silver hedge and can be clipped like lavender.
Some gardens call for a natural hedge and here there is wonderful scope. Hardy fuschias look lovely falling over a wall,
Kerria japonica
rewards one with its bright golden flowers, and for a taller hedge there are laurustinus, old-fashioned roses or cypresses. In a very big garden tall cypress trees, grown without clipping, make a delightful background and save a great deal of work.
I persuaded Walter to put a beech hedge round the orchard. It took a lot of persuasion because for years he had complained that beeches were still clothed in their brown winter leaves when all the rest of the trees were gaily flaunting their delicate spring green. He agreed to beech in the end because we didn’t want quickthorn, the price of yew would have been prohibitive and we didn’t think anything else would be at all suitable for an orchard. In the end Walter became quite attached to his cosy brown hedge. Though he didn’t mind it in the winter he complained in the spring, but agreed that the delicate green of the leaves when they did come was worth waiting for. One clipping a year in August is all it requires and I still think that decision was a good one. Perhaps we might have made it copper beech but that, I think, is a little too refined for an orchard. In a garden copper beech is lovely and I often wonder why more people do not put in hedges of this in their gardens. I know several and they are always a delight to me.
While the lawn and drive were being made I had to work as a labourer with Walter and the garden boy, but when they were finished I was at last permitted to go off and amuse myself in what was to be my part of the garden, the flower beds. I had long been considering what should be done with the ground on the west of the house. This was on a higher level than the rest and sloped up to a small orchard. We were lucky that our garden was on different levels. A garden that is completely flat is difficult to make interesting. We all know gardens that start as a field and finish as a field, no matter what the owners do in the way of trouble and expense. The kindest thing fate can do to you is to give you a garden that slopes away from the house. The upward slope is more difficult to deal with as great care has to be taken that it does not become top heavy.
When we bought the house this part of the garden rose sharply to the orchard without path or form. The speculator who sold the house to us had put in a few miserable gooseberry bushes, but they were choked with couch grass. In fact, it was nothing but a wilderness and looked the most uninspiring material for a garden.
Walter had no particular views about what should be done here. He agreed that I could have it for flowers and left it at that. The work of the garden had divided itself unconsciously. Walter took over the care of the grass, paths, walls and hedges and left the flowers (and most of his clearing up) to me.