Hedge-clip′per.
（
Husbandry.) A favorite device for dividing land into fields, especially where lumber and stone are scarce.
For obvious reasons, the thorn has always been a favorite for this purpose; Micah (vii.
4) says, “Sharper than a thorn hedge.”
It is yet the ordinary fence in
Palestine.
The relevancy of the subject here arises from the fact that tools and machines are made for planting, training, and trimming hedges.
Thorns for hedges were used by the Greeks 1000 B. C.
Homer represents Ulysses as finding
Laertes digging, and preparing to plant a row of quick-sets.
“The art of clipping trees,” says Pliny, “was invented by
C. Martius, a friend of the late Emperor Augustus, within the last eighty years” (A. D. 79). He had not seen the beautiful gardens of
Egypt.
In some of the principal apple counties of England, the hedges are made of apple and pear trees trimmed to the proper proportions.
In Brecknockshire, hazel is much used; blackthorn and hawthorn are also common; the latter is more used than any other hedge shrub.
The osage-orange (
Maclura), honey-locust, and some varieties of thorn, are used in the
United States for hedges.
Hawthorn is the favorite in
England, but does not stand our climate.
Ornamental hedges are made in this country of privet, althea, spruce, arbor vitae, rose, and occasionally a pear or other trees and shrubs.
In
England, the laurel, lauristinus, arbutus,
Portugal laurel, bay, and other beautiful evergreens are used, but they do not so well suit this climate.
Hedges are planted in single or double rows, the latter from eight to twelve inches apart.
The plants about the same, except that in single row they are at a distance of six inches. The maclura or osageorange is the favorite, and has a great tendency to run up. It must be clipped savagely to make it spread below, allowing it an extra three inches of hight at each of the three clippings during its first year's growth.
In succeeding years it may be allowed to advance about a foot a year, and at the end
[
1093]
of five years it should be five feet broad at bottom and five feet high, slanted on each side to a central ridge.
A first-rate fence is horse-high, pig-tight, and bull-strong.
Planted in a single row, six inches apart, a mile of hedge will take 10,560 plants.
A double row — the plants eight inches apart in the rows — will take 15,840 plants.
A fence eight rails high, staked and double-ridered, will, for the same distance, take 7,680 rails.
Board fence, live boards high and the posts six feet apart, will take 1,173 posts and 13,200 feet of lumber, the boards being six inches wide and one inch thick.
To this latter calculation add the value of the nails; and in each mode of fencing consider the first cost of putting in order and the subsequent wear and tear, and the cost of renewal of the rail and board fences, and of clipping the hedges.
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Hedge-clipping machine. |
Hedge-clipping tools are usually shears (see hedge-shears); but machines are made which pass alongside the hedge and, by their revolving cutters, trim it to the shape to which the cutting apparatus is adjusted, as in
Fig. 2479.
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Hedgehog. |
