es the noblest and the
stateliest hedges for long walks in gardens, or parks, of any tree
whatsoever whose leaves are deciduous, and forsake their branches in
winter; because it grows tall, and so sturdy, as not to be wronged by
the winds: Besides, it will furnish to the very foot of the stem, and
flourishes with a glossie and polish'd verdure, which is exceeding
delightful, of long continuance, and of all other the harder woods, the
speediest grower; maintaining a slender, upright-stem, which does not
come to be bare and sticky in many years; it has yet this (shall I call
it) infirmity, that keeping on its leaf till new ones thrust them off,
'tis clad in russet all the winter long. That admirable _espalier_-hedge
in the long middle walk of Luxemburgh garden at Paris (than which there
is nothing more graceful) is planted of this tree; and so was that
cradle, or close-walk, with that perplext canopy which lately covered
the seat in his Majesty's Garden at Hampton-Court, and as now I hear,
they are planted in perfection at New-park, the delicious villa of the
Noble Earl of Rochester, belonging once to a near kinsman of mine, who
parted with it to K. Charles the First of Blessed Memory. These hedges
are tonsile; but where they are maintain'd to fifteen or twenty foot
height (which is very frequent in the places before mention'd) they are
to be cut, and kept in order with a syth of four foot long, and very
little falcated; this is fix'd on a long sneed or streight handle, and
does wonderfully expedite the trimming of these and the like hedges: An
oblong square, palisado'd with this plant, or the Flemish _ormus_, as is
that I am going to describe, and may be seen in that inexhaustible
magazine at Brompton Park (cultivated by those two industrious
fellow-gardiners, Mr. London, and Mr. Wise) affords such an _umbraculum
frondium_, the most natural, proper station and convenience for the
protection of our orange-trees, myrtles, (and other rare perennials and
exoticks) from the scorching darts of the sun, and heat of summer;
placing the cases, pots, &c. under this shelter, when either at the
first peeping out of the winter concleave, or during the increasing heat
of summer, they so are ranged and disposed, as to adorn a noble area of
a most magnificent paradisian dining-room to the top of hortulan pomp
and bliss, superior to all the artificial furniture of the greatest
prince's court: Here the Indian narcissus, tuberoses, Japan-lil