Hedge

“ In some places where the moorland has been reclaimed and parcelled out into grass fields the furze flourishes on the stone hedges: the effect is here singular as well as magnificent, when, standing on a high stone wall, you survey the surrounding country with innumerable furze-clothed hedges dividing the green fields around you in every direction, and appearing like stupendous ropes of shining golden bloom. Hedge beyond hedge they stretch away for miles to grey distant hills and the pale blue sky beyond. ”

“ Upon the whole tree a flood of sunshine pours, and over it is the azure sky. The mingling, shading, and contrast of these colours give a lovely result—the tree is aglow, its foliage ripe with colour.
Farther down comes the steady sound of deliberate blows, and the upper branches of the hedge falls beneath the steel. A sturdy labourer, with a bill on a pole, strikes slow and strong and cuts down the hedge to an even height. ”

“ Many an unsightly heap of rubbish left by the roadside is hidden by the delicate pink bells of the hedge bindweed, which again will clamber over the thickets that line the streams and about the tumbled stone-wall that marks the limit of the pasture. The pretty flowers at once suggest the morning-glory, to which they are closely allied. ”

“ Keen and fresh came the breezes to us from over the mighty fens, for they were unrestrained even by a hedge; pleasantly refreshing and scented were they with the cool odours of marsh flowers, plants, and reeds. The fields being divided by dykes and ditches, in place of hedges, the landscape gained in breadth, for the sweep of the eye was not continually arrested by the bounding hedges that but too often cut up the prospect of the English country-side, chess-board fashion. ”

“ A hundred yards away, in a corner of an arable field, the very windiest and most draughty that could be chosen, where the hedge is cut down so that it can barely be called a hedge, and where the elms draw the wind, the men of the family crowd over a smoky fire. ”

“ Under their cover, well shaded and hidden, birds build, but not against or on the stems, though they will affix their nests to much less certain supports. With the grasses that overhung the edge, with the rushes in the ditch itself, and these great plants on the mound, the whole hedge was wrapped and thickened. ”

“ When the sun falls lower in the sky, and the hedge throws a broad cool shadow over the clipped grass, we all sit under it out of the sunlight, the farmer's daughters in their bright pink blouses and blue skirts, the farmer and Dick and I smoking our pipes together, and the Elf and the Imp in their holland smocks. We all meet under the shadow of the hedge as soon as we see two figures leave the farmyard and come towards us over the fields. ”

“ The little spring that has been bubbling under the hedge all along the hillside, begins, now that we have mounted the eminence and are imperceptibly descending, to deviate into a capricious variety of clear deep pools and channels, so narrow and so choked with weeds, that a child might overstep them. ”

“ Raspberry suckers shoot up in one part of the copse; the fruit is doubtless eaten by the birds. Troops of them come here, travelling along the great hedge by the wayside, and all seem to prefer the outside trees and bushes to the interior of the copse. This great hedge is as wide as a country double mound, though it has but one ditch; the thick hawthorn, blackthorn, elder, and bramble—the oaks, elms, ashes, and firs form, in fact, almost a cover of themselves. ”

“ The low, clipped hawthorn hedge shewed, on the other side, a green and winding lane, which divided the fertile meadows, some of which still swept in emerald luxuriance, while others were sweet with the newly-mown grass. ”

“ Is the hedge cut and trimmed, lo! the bluebells flower the more and a yet fresher green buds forth upon the twigs. Never was there a garden like the meadow: there is not an inch of the meadow in early summer without a flower. Old walls, as we saw just now, are not left without a fringe; on the top of the hardest brick wall, on the sapless tiles, on slates, stonecrop takes hold and becomes a cushion of yellow bloom. Nature is a miniature painter and handles a delicate brush, the tip of which touches the tiniest spot and leaves something living. ”

“ There is an almost cloudless sky, a gentle warm breeze, and a bright sun filling the fields with a glow of light. The air, though soft and genial, is dry, and perhaps it is this quality which gives so peculiar a definition to hedge, tree, and hill. A firm, almost hard, outline brings copse and wood into clear relief ”

“ And yet there is an expedient to effect it more insensibly, by planting it with the quick: Let every fifth or sixth be an holly-set; they will grow up infallibly with your quick; and as they begin to spread, make way for them by extirpating the white-thorn, till they quite domineer: Thus was my hedge first planted, without the least interruption to the fence, by a most pleasant metamorphosis. ”

“ The long grass flowing towards the hedge has reared in a wave against it. Along the hedge it is higher and greener, and rustles into the very bushes. There is a mark only now where the footpath was; it passed close to the hedge, but its place is traceable only as a groove in the sorrel and seed-tops. Though it has quite filled the path, the grass there cannot send its tops so high; it has left a winding crease. By the hedge here stands a moss-grown willow, and its slender branches extend over the sward. Beyond it is an oak, just apart from the bushes ”

“ The second hedge is likely to be lighter and more easy to get through than the first. You come into a broad meadow, and see beyond it the darkness of a woodland you have never entered. On the fringe of it the rabbits are playing. In the bushes are more nests, more fluttering of birds. ”

“ Though meadow, arable, and hop-fields hold now the place of the forest, a goodly remnant remains, for every hedge is full of oak and elm and ash; maple too, and the lesser bushes. At a little distance, so thick are the trees, the whole country appears a wood, and it is easy to see what a forest it must have been centuries ago. ”

“ Slashing, hewing, tearing down, and bending in, he works steadily down the hedge day by day. All the time he is using his judgment at every stroke. Some he hews out at the base and flings behind him on the field. Much he cuts off at what will be the level of the hedge. ”

“ I slid off the milestone into the road, and lay there prostrate, with my face to the great parched hedge, praying that I might give up.
A little puff of air revived me. It seemed to come from the hedge; and, when I opened my eyes, there was a glint of light through the tangle of boughs and dead leaves. The hedge could not be as thick as usual. In my weak, morbid state, I longed to force my way in, and see what was on the other side. No one was in sight, or I should not have dared to try. For we of the road do not admit in conversation that there is another side at all. ”

“ With its large needle-like spines, an inch to an inch and a half long, studding its broad fleshy leaves, and capable of inflicting a wound difficult to heal, and with smaller spines covering the flowers and the fruit, it is easy to see that to a barefooted and lightly clothed people such a hedge presented a very formidable, not to say impassable, barrier. ”

“ Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the kind, than an impregnable hedge of about four hundred foot in length, nine foot high, and five in diameter; which I can shew in my now ruin’d gardens at Say’s-Court, (thanks to the Czar of Moscovy) at any time of the year, glitt’ring with its arm’d and varnish’d leaves? The taller standards at orderly distances, blushing with their natural coral: It mocks at the rudest assaults of the weather, beasts, or hedge-breakers,
Et illum nemo impunè lacessit. ”

“ No bitter winter nips these tender little sympathies, no hot sun burns the life out of them; and therefore they outlast the longevity of the oak, and, if the woodman permitted, would bury it in a green grave, when all is over.
Should there be nothing else along the road to look at, an English hedge might well suffice to occupy the eyes, and, to a depth beyond what he would suppose, the heart of an American. We often set out hedges in our own soil, but might as well set out figs or pineapples and expect to gather fruit of them. Something grows, to be sure, which we choose to call a hedge ”

“ Most of the fields are square, or at all events right-angled, unlike the irregular outline and corners of fields in other counties. The number of meadows make it appear as if the land was chiefly grass, though there is really a fair proportion of arable. Over every green hedge there seems a grassy mead; in every hedge trees are numerous, and their thick June foliage, green too, gives a sense of green colour everywhere. But this is relieved with red—the soil is red, and where the plough has been the red furrows stand out so brightly as to seem lifted a little from the level. ”

“ The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it. Some shady trees leaned over it, and rushes and water-lilies grew at the deep end. Over the hedge on one side we looked into a plowed field, and on the other we looked over a gate at our master's house, which stood by the roadside; ”

“ Trim gravelled walks are but a poor substitute for a grass-grown lane; a neglected hedgerow, a bit of moorland, or even a corner of a common, will hold more that is beautiful, more that is interesting to one who loves the open country, than acres of park, with all their flower-plots and ticketed specimens of foreign shrubs; for in a thorn hedge or a mound of furze one recognises the inexpressible charm that Nature only possesses when she is left to work by herself. ”

“ Human hands first raised them: the process is going on all the time; the labourer, the cow-boy, the farmer himself, when there is nothing else to do, goes out and piles up stones to stop a gap the cattle have made, to add to the height or length of an old hedge, and so on, but the wall once made is taken over by Nature as in the case of the planted hedge. She softens and darkens the crude harsh surface, clothes it in grey and yellow lichens and cushioned green moss, and decorates it with everything that will grow on it, before the time comes for her to ruin and finally to obliterate. ”

“ There is not a single hedge anywhere—no harbour for such plants as have not the stubbornness to live on in spite of plough, and pick, and spade, and hoe. Flowers there are—for flowers are obstinate and persist in coming—grape hyacinths, star of Bethlehem, lungwort, scarlet anemones, tulips, blue-bottles, cornflowers, salvia, and so on—because they dive out of reach of the spade and share, or because they do not object to having their tubers cut up they—rather like it. ”

“ There is a kind of semi-wildness about our back lawn that a great many people profess to admire. It stretches downwards from my indoor study, from where the French windows open on to the trellised verandah, which in this sweet month of June, as I write, is all a smother of roses. The walk winds downwards well to one side, and not far from a massive hedge, but this hedge is hidden from view for the most part by a ragged row of trees. ”

“ Hedges may be of two kinds—the neat trimmed hedge, which serves as an outside line to a garden, and also as a screen or wind-break to small or tender plants growing near it; and the straggling rough hedge, varying from 10 to 20 feet in width, more properly a wide bank made up of all sorts of plants, rambling Roses, ornamental Vines, and other things which usually serve to brighten some spot where colour is desirable, or to shut out an undesirable view. ”

“ Rushes have sprung up and mark the line of the ruts, and willow stoles, bramble bushes, and thorns growing at the side, make, as it were, a third hedge in the middle of the lane. The best path is by the wood itself, but even there occasional leaps are necessary over pools of dark water full of vegetation. ”

“ Slender grasses, branched round about with slenderer boughs, each tipped with pollen and rising in tiers cone-shaped—too delicate to grow tall—cluster at the base of the mound. They dare not grow tall or the wind would snap them. A great grass, stout and thick, rises three feet by the hedge, with a head another foot nearly, very green and strong and bold, lifting itself right up to you; you must say, 'What a fine grass!' Grasses whose awns succeed each other alternately ”

“ For the ordering of the ground within the great hedge, I leave it to variety of device; advising nevertheless that whatsoever form you cast it into, first, it be not too busy, or full of work. Wherein I, for my part, do not like images cut out in juniper or other garden stuff; they be for children. Little low hedges, round, like welts, with some pretty pyramids, I like well; and in some places, fair columns upon frames of carpenter's work. I would also have the alleys spacious and fair. You may have closer alleys upon the side grounds, but none in the main garden. ”

“ Outside of every hedge, towards the street, there is generally a ditch, and at the bottom of the hedge is the favorite nestling-place for all sorts of wild flowers. I remember reading in stories about children trying to crawl through a gap in the hedge to get at flowers, and tumbling into a ditch on the other side, and I now saw exactly how they could do it. ”

“ The Hillside Hedge: its Birds and Flowers—A Green Track—The Spring-head. A low thick hawthorn hedge runs along some distance below the earthwork just at the foot of the steepest part of the hill. It divides the greensward of the down from the ploughed land of the plain, which stretches two or three miles wide, across to another range opposite. A few stunted ash trees grow at intervals among the bushes, which are the favourite resort of finches and birds that feed upon the seeds and insects they find in the cultivated fields. ”