222 THE FLORIST. 



easily in America as most other foreign vines. We are yet too 

 young — this country of a great future and a little past. 



The richest and most perfect specimen of it that we have seen 

 in the Northern States is upon the cottage of Washington Irving, 

 on the Hudson, near Tarrytown. He who, as you all know, lingers 

 over the past with a reverence as fond and poetical as that of a pious 

 Crusader for the walls of Jerusalem ; yes, he has completely won 

 the sympathies of the Ivy even on our own soil, and it has gar- 

 landed and decked his antique and quaint cottage, Sunnyside, till 

 its windows peep out from amid the wealth of its foliage, like the 

 dark eyes of a Spanish seiiora from a shadowy canopy of dark lace 

 and darker tresses. The Ivy is the finest of climbers too, because 

 it is so perfectly evergreen. 



After this plant comes always our Virginia Creeper, or American 

 Ivy, as it is often called {Ampelopsis). It grows more rapidly than 

 the Ivy, clings in the same way to wood or stone, and makes rich 

 and beautiful festoons of verdure in summer, dying off in autumn, 

 before the leaves fall, in the finest crimson. Its greatest beauty on 

 this account is perhaps seen when it runs up in the centre of a dark 

 Cedar, or other evergreen, exhibiting in October the richest contrast 

 of the two colours. It will grow any where, in the coldest situa- 

 tions, and only asks to be planted to work out its own problem of 

 beauty without further attention. 



The common Trumpet Creeper all of you know by heart. It is 

 rather a wild and rambling fellow in its habits ; but nothing is more 

 showy or magnificent. It absolutely glows in July with thousands 

 of rich orange-red blossoms, like clusters of bright goblets. 



We might go on and enumerate dozens more of fine twining 

 shrubs and climbing Roses ; but that would only defeat our object, 

 which is not to give you a garden-catalogue, but to tell you of half 

 a dozen hardy shrubby wall-plants, which we implore you to make 

 popular ; so that w^herever we travel we shall see no rural cottages 

 shivering in their chill nudity of bare walls or barer boards, but 

 draped tastefully with something fresh, and green, and graceful : 

 let it be a Hop-vine, if nothing better ; but Roses, and Wistarias, 

 and Honeysuckles, if they can be had. 



A word or two about Vines in the garden and pleasure-grounds 

 before we conclude. How to make arhoiirs and trellises is no mystery, 

 though you will, no doubt, agree with us that the less formal and 

 the more rustic the better. But how to manage single specimens 

 of fine climbers in the lawn or garden, so as to display them to 

 the best advantage, is not quite so clear. Small fanciful frames 

 are pretty, but soon want repairs ; and stakes, though ever so stout, 

 will rot off at the bottom, and blow down in high winds, to your 

 great mortification ; and that too, perhaps, when your plant is in its 

 very court-dress of bud and blossom. 



Now the best mode of treating single Vines, when you have not 

 a tree to festoon them upon, is one which many of 3'ou will be able 

 to attain easily. It is nothing more than getting from the woods 

 the trunk of a Cedar-tree, from 10 to 15 feet high, shortening-in all 



