Draper y of Cottages and Gardens 175 



its talc of departed greatness; the confidant of old ruined 

 castles and abbeys; the bosom companion of solitude 

 itself, - 



"Deep in your most sequestered bower 



Let me at last recline, 

 Where solitude, mild, modest flower, 

 Leans on her ivy'd shrine." 



True to these instincts, the Ivy does not seem to be 

 naturalized so 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 Washing- 

 ton 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 garlanded 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 Sefiora from a shadowy 

 canopy of dark lace and darker tresses. 



The Ivy is the finest of climbers, too, because it is so 

 perfectly evergreen. North of New York it is a little ten- 

 der, and needs to be sheltered for a few years, unless it be 

 planted on a north wall, quite out of the reach of the winter 

 sun) ; and north of Albany, we think it will not grow at all. 

 But all over the middle states it should be planted and 

 cherished, wherever there is a wall for it to cling to, as the 

 finest of all cottage drapery.* 



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 



* The experience of another 70 years does not bear out Mr. Downing's 

 recommendation of the English ivy. There are only a few localities, 

 mostly on the eastern seaboard, where it can be used with satisfaction. 

 -F. A. W. 



