IRISH GARDENING 



VOLUME III. 



No. 32 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE 



ADVANCEMENT OF HORTICULTURE AND 



ARBORICULTURE IN IRELAND 



OCTOBER 



The Home Beautiful. 



By Edward Knowldin, F.R.H.S., Secretary Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland. 



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*^ '' I *HERE is no place like home," and 

 X there is no occasion to say so, only 

 that inasmuch as there are homes and 

 homes, and some who have love of g'ardening- 

 in their hearts as well as the love of home, and 

 hrint;r the two into happy alliance, are, one 

 feels, public benefactors. Even the humblest 

 home, when embowered in blossoms and 

 g-reenery, is pleasant to the eye of all, and 

 more also, but of that anon ; and one feels 

 that it was a happy editorial thoui^ht which 

 associates the subject with Irish Gardening, 

 for there are wide openini^s for its extension 

 through the leng-th and breadth of the Green 

 Isle. 



Among-st the wealth of material now avail- 

 able for beautifying- the home one climber and 

 one creeper, for which we are indebted to China 

 and Japan respectively, stand out pre-eminent 



as decorative subjects. First, the Wistaria, 

 which we venture to call a trailer-climber ; the 

 other, Ampelopsis vcitchi, that creeper which 

 cling-eth closer than a brother. It would 

 be superfluous to discuss plants so well 

 known to readers, and as vain to shower 

 praise on them as to "paint the lily;" 

 yet, momentarily, one recalls the some- 

 what rare examples of ancient Wistarias, 

 as seen on the verandahed fagade of some 

 old manor house — a house which comes 

 not, perhaps, within the category of " the 

 stately homes," but few will dispute its 

 claims to the most picturesque. It is 

 here that the most beautiful of our trailer- 

 climbers is most happily situated, when, 

 with the verandah as a support, it frames 

 the whole in festoons of inimitable grace 

 and peerless beauty. 



The writer having- reached his anecdote- 

 agfe may be pardoned in recounting- a 

 little story told to him and the late Mr. Burbidg-e 

 by a g-entleman when looking- at the giant Wis- 

 taria covering the old stone arch in the Trinity 

 Botanical Gardens, Dublin. "Ah!" he saicl, 

 "a similar plant covered the front of my old 

 home, and one day when in full bloom a gypsy 

 woman came to my father and said — ' Will 

 you please tell me the name of the beautiful 

 flower?' He told her. She then said — 'Will 

 you please write it down ?' He wrote it down 

 W-i-s-t-a-r-i-a. ' But why,' he asked, 'do you 

 want to know?' She replied — 'There was a 

 baby girl born in the camp last night, and we 

 intend tc^ call it after the flower.'" Truly, a 

 simple but eloquent tribute to the Wistaria ! 



Ampelopsis vcitchi, which every up-to-date 

 young gardener tells us we should now call 

 Vitis inconstans, and which in our perverseness 

 we won't, haviiig a penchant for old names, old 

 friends and old fashions, is the one thing in 

 creepers which all seem to have taken to their 

 hearts, and many to their buildings, to the end 

 of its doing a lot to beautify bricks and mortar, 



