CHAPTER XXV. 

 CLIMBING PLANTS FOR CALIFORNIA GARDENS. 



From what has been so freely asserted about the free-growing 

 delight which all other classes of plants manifest in California the 

 reader may be left to infer that climbing plants do well and that for 

 many kinds of them, the luxuriance of their growth and the abundance 

 and gorgeousness of their blossoms, as displayed from tree-tops and 

 house-tops, if they are allowed to have their own way, California is 

 remarkable. Native vines of which the botanists and wild-flower en- 

 thusiasts tell us (see page 8), clamber over the ocean-side cliffs, sub- 

 merge the tall sycamores along the river-banks, and even spread their 

 delicate foliage and flowers over large areas of the valley plains. The 

 amateur who resolves to use only California native plants in his garden, 

 will find no lack of wild vines to complete his purpose. And in the line 

 of suitability for exotics, what has been said of all other plants is true 

 for vines; you can grow successfully all the climbers which dwellers in 

 temperate and semi-tropical zones enjoy, but you must stop short of 

 the real tropics, as several people who have tried to grow vanilla in 

 California have sadly demonstrated. 



Ways of Growing Vines. There is the same issue between the 

 artist, poet and gardener in the growing of vines as of other plants. 

 This is suggested, and some principles which the gardener must 

 observe, are given in Chapter XL It is the gardener's art to grow a 

 vine so that it shall en-clothe a building, a pergola or a trellis, showing 

 to best advantage its foliage and bloom. It is the artist's and poet's 

 desire, generally, that the vine shall not be trained, but shall be per- 

 mitted to embower whatever support it can gain possession of. The 

 result is that the properly trained vine remains the permanent investi- 

 ture of its support, disclosing its outline and decorating it with the 

 beauty of leaf and flower; while the untrained vine becomes a shell of 

 growth covering an internal mass of dead leaves and twigs and im- 

 prisoned litter, until an unusually high wind blows off the whole bower 

 with its accumulation of old birds' nests, dusting cloths and other 

 things lost from windows, and various articles thrown from time to 

 time at too melodious cats. And in its fall the poetic and artistic rub- 

 bish will probably break to pieces many desirable shrubs and other 

 plants. 



Probably the owner will scrub off and repaint the house and declare 

 that never again shall a vine grow upon it, but this is not the right 

 answer. Vines should grow upon houses in the California climates at 

 least. They are innocent of the harm commonly charged upon them 



