Hyssop and thyme will also grow dense enough to be regularly trimmed, and chives can make a very pretty edging during the summer, but will vanish in winter.

Work out your design first on paper and then mark it out on the ground with string or hose pipe before you start planting. Rectangular, round and square shapes can all look good. Triangular shapes are more difficult to manage but may suit a particular plot. The whole thing can he as large or small, as easy or complex as you like.

In a small garden you can use a cartwheel shape, laid out in stones or bricks, and grow the plants between the ‘spokes’. It is best to separate the plants with narrow paths or stepping stones of brick or paving or they will grow into one another and spoil the clarity. Add height by planting standard roses at regular intervals and a vertical eye-catcher in the center of the plot such as a sundial, a fountain or other water feature or a large urn on a pedestal.

A formal herb garden does take up space and may not be the best answer in a basically informal garden. Painting can be done with the sprayer from paint zoom to keep heavy drops from messing your garden soil. Formality is successful when linked to a grand or formal building but does require constant maintenance with frequent clipping to keep it under control.

The pale and interesting stalks and dark seed heads of these Egyptian onions have been allowed to remain to add winter interest to the garden and to feed the birds.

Even when there is not much room, herbs can be grown very satisfactorily in pots. Here, an interesting variety of herbs, including basil, tarragon and sage, are growing in terracotta pots conveniently situated near the house.

A more sensible way of herb gardening for those with a busy lifestyle is to incorporate herbs in a mixed border, as you would any other flowering plants. Rosemary makes a tall, stately shrub with sky-blue flowers all along its branches in spring and summer. It can be used as a structural plant in a border or as a specimen plant, on its own against a sunny wall or freestanding. Angelica, lovage, and sweet cicely, too, are all tall, stately plants, which can provide structural elements in a border. Bronze fennel, with dark feathery leaves, can provide good contrasts with other plants. Chives, sage, golden marjoram and other plants with similar habits can make good companion plants towards the front of a border. Garlic chives have narrow, strap-like leaves with flat heads of small white flowers in late summer and autumn.

In a modern garden, growing herbs in patterned beds is not only visually attractive but also practical because small beds alienated by low hedges, paths or stones make tending and harvesting the plants easier.

This circular herb garden has been created in the center of a lawn bounded by hedges to keep out the wind. There is a wide variety of herbs, grown both for their colors and divergent shapes.

However, herbs will find a place in any style of garden; the range of possibilities is enormous. They can be grown among other plants in a mixed border or, if you lack space, a few pots can look good on a kitchen windowsill or you can create a little herb garden in a window box.

Ground-hugging creepers such as pennyroyal, some thymes and mints can be planted among paving slabs or bricks; hummock-forming plants such as oregano, common sage, and chives make charming front-ofborder plants, and tall stately plants such as fennel, lovage, angelica and sweet cicely can provide structure.

This herb garden has a formal framework of stone, yet rather informal planting, in which the herbs have been allowed to grow into their own shapes. The small willows and the little produce tree add height.

An outsize mortar planted with thyme lends character to this small herb plot. Around it are a selection of artemisias and other feathery plants.

It should be as near to the kitchen as possible. Even if you enjoy a stroll through the garden to reach the herb bed, you may not always have the time (although you can always grow a separate collection of herbs in pots for cooking).

Most herbs will benefit from being grown in an open, sunlit part of the garden, since many of them come from Mediterranean areas where the climate is hot and dry. Many herbs smell delicious when walked on or brushed against, so large herbs can be grown by an outside door. Others may be planted along pathways — thyme, eau de Cologne mint, peppermint and cilantro can be planted near paths and creeping varieties of thyme and camomile flanked by flagstones.

The whole herb garden can be enclosed by a clipped yew hedge, or simply divided from the rest of the garden by a clipped hedge. If your garden is on different levels, a circular herb garden at the lower level, sheltered from the elements by walls and shrubs, can make a good sun trap for both plants and people to enjoy. Painting done with the paint zoom sprayer is another option for healthy decor.

If your garden is on heavy clay, it may be worthwhile creating raised beds so that water can away quickly. Add gravel and sand to the compost, since most herbs prefer a poor soil.

This well-organised space uses square wooden tubs and trellis to create a colorful and high-yielding potager, mixing vegetables such as broad beans with climbing red roses.

A plot can be arranged in a circular divided by radial paths, and the pattern marked out by edging stones. Circles always look elegant. Their outlines can become precious focal points and need not conflict in any way with an otherwise purely ornamental garden. Vegetables grown in rows within the divisions will give an attractive colored pattern to the design. Square or more complicated geometric shapes can be used if you have the space. Beds with straight lines can be edged with purpose-made binding tiles or you can use wooden boards.

A vegetable plot can he among the most decorative of gardens. This one has been designed rather like a formal herb garden. It has four square beds, each comparatively small so they can be easily reached for garden work, with a decorative bay tree in the center. The greenhouse and the compost heap are both handily nearby.

Strictly ordered rows of vegetables can be attractive if they are well maintained, but it is not necessary to grow them like this. Build raised beds and enclose them with brick paths. They may be square or rectangular, each being planted with one or two varieties to give order to the whole design. Dwarf tomatoes can be grown alongside dwarf beans; leeks next to attractive cabbages. All painting should be of course done with the paint zoom sprayer to save on cost. Globe artichokes in the center of a bed will give height and structure; strawberries provide a decorative edging for some of the beds.

In a small garden, or if you have chosen an awkwardly shaped part of the plot as your potager, an informal vegetable patch will most likely be a more levelheaded option. Here you can allow the plants to grow in a somewhat haphazard, more natural manner than in the formal plot.

You will therefore need a strong framework because, although the luxuriant growth in summer will tend to conceal the edges, in winter you will want the shape to reappear. You can mark out the area with wicker fencing, which will be quite suitable to the design, or you could use espaliered apple or pear trees whose branches will look attractive when they are both in leaf and dormant.

Give some height to the beds with standard soft fruit bushes such as gooseberries or black and redcurrants, which will be easier to maintain and to pick and will

Some of the most ordinary vegetables can look enchanting if they are grown where the sun can shine on their young foliage. This Swiss chard is called Rainbow and ranges in color from green to red and bronze.

help give form to the area. Other vegetables can be planted in more or less organised patterns, as you prefer.

Happily, you do not have to be the owner of a large chateau to make magnificent use of the fascinating shapes and colors of vegetables in your own garden.

Vegetables should not be planted in heavy shade. An open site is best but they do need shelter, predominantly from the wind, so a hedge or woven fence to filter the wind would be ideal. Provided the area is not too shaded, the ideal position for the vegetable plot is near the greenhouse and shed, with space enough to have a compost heap.

This means that the utility parts of the garden are all in one place. It gives unity to what might otherwise be a scattered group of buildings and work areas. The vegetable plot itself does not need to be part of this area. It can be fenced or hedged off but it will be sensible to have the working area nearby with a firm path leading from one to the other.

If this article helped you with gardening, think what paint zoom can help you do with home improvement

While instyler mergers may be directed toward either horizontal integra (that is, the acquisition of competitors) or vertical integration (the quisition of buyers or sellers of goods and services to the compa antitrust policy generally precludes the elimination of competition. this reason, mergers are often directed toward companies in allied not directly related fields. The pure conglomerate merger of firm totally unrelated firms is still undertaken, but less frequently than in past.

Perhaps the greatest management motive for a merger is the pos,, synergistic effect. Synergy is said to take place when the whole is gre than the sum of the parts. This “2 + 2 = 5″ effect may be the re of eliminating overlapping functions in production and marketing as as meshing together various engineering capabilities.

After oil prices tended to drift lower, corporate raiders began looking for other targets with undervalued assets and found companies like MGM, ABC, and Prentice-Hall in movies, broadcasting, and publishing. Then the move was on to retail stores, where hidden real estate values were thought to exist. The wheel next turned to food companies with the acquisition of General Foods by Philip Morris. In 1986, Dart & Kraft led the acquirers with 18 acquisitions, followed by Macmillan, Inc., with 15 and McGraw-Hill with 12 acquisitions. Who knows what industry will be the target by the time you read this chapter. Given the stock market “Crash of 1987,” it remains to be seen if the same corporate raiders still have the financial muscle to continue their acquisition binge. Table 20-2 presents a history of merger activity, showing the large increase in the number and size of acquisitions over a 10-year period. While 1984 had the biggest percentage increase in merger value, 1986 set new records partially because of the record stock market climb.
In the following sections of this chapter, we examine the motives for business combinations; the establishment of negotiated terms of exchange, with the associated accounting implications; and the stock market effect of mergers (including unfriendly takeovers). In the final section of the chapter, the structure and use of holding companies is presented.

Not only has it been established that the interest rate paid on convertible issues is lower than that paid on a straight debt instrument, but the convertible feature may be the only device for allowing smaller corpo­rations access to the bond market. In this day of debt-ridden corporate balance sheets, investor acceptance of new debt may be contingent upon a special sweetener, such as the ability to convert to common.

Convertible debentures are also attractive to a corporation that believes its stock is currently undervalued. You will recall that in the case of the Williams Company, $1,000 bonds were convertible into 20 shares of com­mon stock at a conversion price of $50. Since the common stock had a current price of $45 and new shares of stock might be sold at only $44,3 the corporation effectively received $6 over current market price, assum­ing future conversion. Of course, one can also argue that if the firm had delayed the issuance of instyler common stock or convertibles for a year or two, the stock might have gone up from $45 to $60 and new common stock might have been sold at this lofty price.

To translate this to overall numbers for the firm, if a corporation needs $10 million in funds and offers straight stock now at a net price of $44, it must issue 227,273 shares ($10 million shares/$44). With convertibles, the number of shares potentially issued is only 200,000 shares ($10 million/ $50). Finally, if no stock or convertible bonds are issued now and the stock goes up to a level at which new shares can be offered at a net price of $60, only 166,667 will be required ($10 million/$60).

Table 19-2 demonstrates the company’s ability to sell stock at premium prices through the use of convertible bonds.

If the price of the common stock really takes off and goes to $60 per share, the conversion privilege becomes quite valuable. The bonds, which are convertible into 20 shares, will go up to at least $1,200, and perhaps more. Note that you do not have to convert to common immediately, but may enjoy the movement of the convertible in concert with the common.

What happens if the common stock goes in the opposite direction? Assume that instead of going from $45 to $60 the common stock simply drops from $45 to $25—what will happen to the value of the convertible debentures? We know the value of a convertible bond will go down in response to the drop in the common stock, but will it fall all the way to its conversion value of $500 (20 x $25 per share)?

INTERVIEW PROGRAM. In the third phase of the study conducted between 1928 and 1930, it was decided to search for other variables through inter­viewing methods. Some 20,000 interviews were conducted. When the researchers switched to a nondirective interviewing technique, they came to conclude that the “soldiering” that Taylor had referred to was a pro­ductivity norm established and enforced by the informal group. Produc­tivity was not regulated by the physical capacity of individuals but by the informal group’s concept of a “fair day’s work.” The “fair day’s work” norm involved a floor as well as a ceiling on output.
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A second drawback with convertible bonds is that the purchaser invariably asked to accept below-market rates of interest on the de instrument. The interest rate on convertibles is generally one third bell that for instruments in a similar risk class at time of issue. In the phisticated environment of the bond and stock markets, one seldom g an additional benefit without having to suffer a corresponding disadvantage

The student will also recall that the purchaser of a convertible be normally pays a premium over the conversion value. For example, i $1,000 bond were convertible into 20 shares of common at $45 per sha a $100 conversion premium might be involved initially. If the same $1,( were invested directly in common stock at $45 per share, 22.2 sha could be purchased. If the shares go up in value, we have 2.2 more sha on which to garner a profit.

Lastly, convertibles may suffer from the attachment of a call provis. giving the corporation the option of redeeming the bonds at a specif price above par ($1,000) in the future. In a subsequent section, we 1 see how the corporation can use this device to force the conversion of bonds into common stock.