322 The American Flower Garden 



winter-killed after successfully reaching a chimney-top, won by 

 ten years climbing. While it seldom succumbs to frost in the 

 Middle States, and never in the South, the protracted heat there 

 curbs that half-wild luxuriance which characterises it abroad. 



However, let us plant it much more freely than we do ! Count 

 less opportunities to use it pass unheeded, either because we do not 

 rightly estimate its great pictorial value, or we too readily accept 

 its limitations. If we cannot use it everywhere, as the English do, 

 at least we can find a place for it somewhere about every home. 

 But the almost universal painted wooden house in this country dis 

 courages the attempt to grow ivy on its walls. Brick, stone and 

 stucco are its proper supporters; the coming building is to be made 

 of concrete, we understand, and wherever one of these building 

 materials occurs, there should the ivy cling. It does not make a 

 house damp, for there is always a free circulation of air under the 

 leaves; its aerial roots do not weaken walls, in spite of a popular 

 notion to the contrary. In fact, the vine strengthens them. Many 

 a ruin in England would have tumbled to the ground years ago had 

 not the branching, tenacious ivy bound together the bricks or stones 

 from which the mortar had crumbled away. 



Protection from the sun in winter, such as widths of matting 

 or braided straw tacked over them afford, would keep our ivies 

 permanently green even in sunny places or on very cold northern 

 sites where, in any case, their roots should be covered with leaves 

 or stable litter. A mulch to keep the roots cool and moist in summer 

 when they need to be encouraged to delve for food, rich in humus, 

 placed below them by the thoughtful gardener when he planted 

 them, will carry the vines triumphantly through heat and drought. 

 They delight in moisture, too. For shrubbery borders, the ivy, 

 clipped wherever it strays beyond a ten-inch limit, makes a most 



