DOMESTIC NOTICES. 



Dnnirstir lintins. 



Frontispiece — Vinery at Medary. — Our 

 vignette this month, is a A'ery accurate view of 

 the vinery at Medary, the country seat of 

 Harry Ingersoll, Esq., near Philadelphia. 



We saw the vinery last autumn, just after its 

 completion, and it struck us that in size and 

 proportion, it might be taken as a viodel for 

 this kind of structure for the amateur's garden, 

 or for a gentleman's residence, where only a 

 moderate supply of grapes is desired— since it 

 would afford without fire heat a sufficiency of 

 delicious foreign grapes for the use of the fami- 

 ly. Its light and elegant appearance, and the 

 simplicity and neatness of its construction, re- 

 commend it to the eye as an agreeable feature 

 in the fruit-garden. 



The plan and construction of this building are 

 substantially that contrived and carried out on a 

 larger scale by Mr. Van Rensselaer, in his 

 vinery at Clinton Point, on the Hudson, and an 

 interior view of which we gave in vol. iv, p. 

 178. 



We add the following note from Mr. Inger- 

 soll, explanatory of its dimensions and exact 

 cost, for the use of any of our readers about 

 building vineries,* and we have the promise of 

 some detailed drawings of another building of 

 this kind near Boston, which we hope soon to 

 present to our readers. Ed. 



My Dear Sir — I wish to redeem mypi-oraise 

 to give you the exact cost of a moderate sized 

 vinery, on the plan of that of Mr. Van Eens- 

 selaer, your neighbor on the Hudson. 



The building is 43 feet 6 inches in length, by 

 18 feet wide, and fourteen feet high. 

 The materials used by the carpenters, including 



iron work, cost, $185 00 



Carpenters' labor, 200 00 



Glass, 00 00 



Painting and materials, 28 00 



$503 00 

 I may mention that all the materials are the 

 best that could be got. And that the work was 

 done by city mechanics at city prices. 



The cost of making the borders, which are 

 each 18 feet wide by 3 feet deep, according to 



carpenter in our neighborhood offers to contract to 

 eries like this for SIO the rumiuicr foot. 



your instructions, and altogether outside the 

 house, must vary so much that no accurate es- 

 timate can be given. Mine cost very little ; all 

 the matters, (except the ground bones,) used 

 in them — the leaf mould, decomposed sod, and 

 manure — were collected about the farm ; and 

 the labor was done by the gardener and other 

 people at convenient times. Yours sincerely, 

 Harry Ingersoll. Bristol township, Phila- 

 delphia Co., Jan. 22, 1851. 



Climbing plants — Golden Trumpet Flow- 

 er. — I do not agree entirely with your friend 

 the English Landscape Gardener, that we are 

 an ungrateful people — ungrateful for our rich 

 gifts of native trees and plants. We do not 

 plead guilty to ingratitude. Ignorance may 

 be our misfortune, but ungrateful we are not. 

 Show us how Ave ought to evince our gratitude 

 — point out the object that would not forget 

 the good we bestowed on it — name the indi- 

 vidual that would do credit to our adoption ; 

 and Americans will be found as ready to bestow 

 on them as high a patronage, and to estimate 

 as highly as the most antique nation under his- 

 tory the duties which that patronage and adop- 

 tion involved. We do not know what to be 

 grateful for. Let us once understand that, 

 and then judge us. 



The English ivy is indeed a noble plant. We 

 have no substitute. There is none. It has a 

 peculiar charm of its own which no other plant 

 possesses. In its historical associations it is 

 unrivalled, — in its poetical expressiveness it 

 has no compeer, and in its relation to all the ro- 

 mantic past, it speaks forth volumes where any 

 other plant would be speechless. Who that 

 has travelled in Europe — no matter how many 

 years may have since elapsed — can look upon 

 an ivy in America without being easily led back 

 in imagination or memory to the old ruined 

 castles, palaces, and abbeys around which 

 gathers the history of those foreign lands? For 

 my part I can seldom look upon the magnifi- 

 cent robe of ivy which envelopes the old dwel- 

 ling of that great botanist Bartram, (from 

 whence I write these lines,) but I can almost 

 fancy that I see a host of grim warriors in arms 



