Vines 325 



kinds. Until one s attention is called to it, no one would believe 

 how common is the custom of planting the large-flowered purple 

 Jackman s clematis against red-brick buildings. Yet, when it 

 spreads its royal bloom over them, nothing in the great range of 

 garden possibilities is more excruciatingly awful. On a gray- 

 shingled house or among the lacy foliage of a bowery pergola, the 

 blossoms have a chance to show how really handsome they are. 

 One of the most beautiful effects with clematis is remembered by 

 any European traveller who has had the good fortune to be in 

 Normandy when sprays of the white, foamy flowers of the native 

 wild species toss themselves from the sombre green of the pine trees 

 in the coniferous forests. Our Virgin s bower rarely, if ever, climbs 

 so high. But it flings out the right hand of good fellowship to every 

 bush and low tree in the roadside thicket and hedgerow, and the 

 feathery styles of its pistillate plants form hoary masses, more 

 attractive than its flowers. Possibly the Japanese paniculata, which 

 grows so luxuriantly here, could be induced to festoon our pines 

 and hemlocks, but, so far as I know, the experiment has never 

 been tried. 



No one need be urged to use Veitch s ampelopsis, or Japanese 

 ivy; already it is one of our most over-planted garden staples. The 

 delicate traceries of its fresh young growth, clinging by little adhesive 

 disks at the tips of its pink fingers to the sustaining wall, and its 

 shining new leaves, that look as if they were covered with varnish, 

 are undeniably pretty. The large overlapping leaves of older 

 growth conceal, in time, any surface, rough or smooth, they may 

 grow against, but the danger is lest they become too dense. Only 

 when they occur on brick factories is one grateful if they do. Heavy 

 and mat-like foliage effects are rarely wanted on dwellings, except 

 on large ones, and chiefly about the foundations and lower walls of 



