From: klier@cobra.uni.edu
Newsgroups: rec.gardens
Subject: Re: What is a Ha-ha?
Date: 4 Apr 95 14:47:12 -0600

I discovered ha-has at a Capability Brown-designed garden in 
England....  I think I discovered the source of the name, too...

Picture three jetlagged botanists in their first encounter with a
Great British Landscape Garden.  Rushing around taking pictures, not
paying a whole lot of attention to many things they might have
otherwise noticed.  Interesting garden... kinda formal near the
house, vast vistas blending into far away grazing lands. (Question
that did not occur to me at the time:  How do you keep the cows out
of the garden without a fence?)

Well, I discovered how you kept the cows out without a fence:
you dig an irregular, deep ditch around the garden.  90o wall
closest to the house, other bank more sloped, so it looks like
a meandering stream.

Botanists who are paying more attention to new (to them) genera
of conifers in their camera viewfinders have been known to walk
backwards off that 90o wall, and land on their dignity in the
bottom of the ditch.  Other botanists, and supposed friends,
collapse making "hahahaha" noises....      (and Linda knew about
Capability Brown and ha-has and didn't warn me, the fink!)_

Anyhow, a landscaped ditch that serves as a barrier to livestock
is a ha-ha.

Kay Klier  klier@cobra.uni.edu
===

From: matt@ua.nsw.ac.uk (Matt Brunton)
Newsgroups: rec.gardens
Subject: Re: What is a Ha-ha?
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 1995 09:36:50

I understood a 'ha-ha' to be a form of ditch.  It was often used in
stately homes so as not to spoil a view (which a hedge or fence would
do) Apologies for the ASCII graphics....


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Matt