CLIMBERS AND THEIR ARTISTIC USE. 



see on walls, are not less so on banks, or even on the level ground. 

 Pretty fences and dividing screens may also be easily formed by hardy 

 climbers. The wild kinds of Clematis are charming, and, apart from 

 their use in the garden, they should be encouraged for trees and 

 banks. 



The Ivy of our northern woods has broken into a number of 

 beautiful varieties often distinct in form and even in colour ; they 

 deserve far more attention for evergreen bowers, evergreen fences, and 

 dividing lines, apart from their growth on walls and trees. The bush 

 forms of these may make broken hedge-like garlands 2 feet to 3 feet 

 high round little isolated flower gardens. Almost equally beautiful 

 plants in form of leaf are the Green Briers (Smilax), some of which 

 are hardy in England, but seen in few gardens, and rarely treated in an 

 artistic way, though excellent for walls and rocks. In the eastern 

 counties they may be seen doing well in the open ground, as in 

 Cambridge. 



Of the beauty of the Jasmine of all climbers there is least need 

 to speak, yet how rarely one sees the old white Jasmine made good 

 use of in large gardens. It should be in bold wreaths or masses 

 where it thrives, and so also the winter Jasmine, which is a precious 

 thing for our country, should not be put in as a plant or two in bad 

 conditions, but treated as a fine distinct thing in masses round cottages 

 and outhouses. The finest of hardy climbers, the Wistaria, is much 

 more frequently and rightly planted in France than in our gardens, 

 though it thrives in the Thames valley as well as in the Seine valley. 

 It should be, in addition to its use on walls and houses, made into 

 bold covered ways and bowers and trained up trees, and even along 

 Oak fences. 



Vigorous Climbers on Trees. — It is not only that stout climbers 

 are more beautiful and natural, and show their form better growing 

 amongst trees, but it is the best way that many of them can be grown 

 with safety owing to their vigour. The way the common Ivy wreaths 

 the trees in rich woods, and the wild Clematis throws ropes up trees on 

 the chalk hills, shows what the larger hardy climbers do over trees or 

 rough or open copses, or even now and then in hedgerows. Some 

 vigorous climbers would in time ascend the tallest trees, and there 

 is nothing more beautiful than a veil of Clematis montana running 

 over a tall tree. Besides the well-known climbers, there are species 

 of Clematis which have never come into general cultivation, but 

 which are beautiful for such uses, though not all showy. The same 

 may be said of the Honeysuckles, wild Vines, and various other 

 families with which much of the northern tree and shrub world is 

 garlanded. Occasionally one sees a climbing Rose rambling over a 

 tree, and perhaps among our garden pictures nothing is more lovely 



K 



