158 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



growth, one must admit that for ten days the red and 

 bronze and gold of its autumn tints go far to compensate 

 for its many defects during the rest of the year. But this 

 pleasure is easily retained by allowing it to grow over 

 some ugly barn or northern wall, which has no architecture 

 to injure or hide, and where flowering creepers would not 

 flower. No one who has ever been to America and seen 

 Boston can forget the dreary effect of house after house 

 covered from cellar to roof with this luxuriant, overpower- 

 ing ' Vine,' as every Creeper is called in America. The 

 true name of the Ampelopsis is Tricuspidata ; but the 

 Americans call it Japanese Ivy, in memory of where it 

 comes from. If anything could accentuate the ugliness 

 of the general effect, it is the square holes cut for the 

 windows in this evenly green foliage. Everything is 

 worth having in London that will grow there, but, with 

 this picture in my mind, may I urge all who have any 

 influence to make some protest against the fashionable 

 use of this creeper, which seems to prevail from South to 

 North of Great Britain ? Just before I left home I saw 

 with consternation that every delicate brick turret of 

 Hampton Court Palace had been carefully planted with 

 Ampelopsis. For the present it looks harmless enough 

 to all but the prophetic eye of a gardener, but in a few 

 years the sharp lines of the delicate masonry will be 

 entirely veiled by its luxuriant and monotonous growth. 

 Surely fine and historical buildings are very much better 

 left without creepers. In the case of ordinary modern 

 houses with bare walls it is infinitely better to cover them 

 with some of the endless variety of shrubs, creepers, and 

 plants, which can be chosen to flower in succession 

 through the whole year from the Chimonanthusfragrans, 

 which pushes forth its sweet-scented brown flowers in 

 January, to the bare branches of the Jasminum nudi- 

 florum, whose yellow stars light up a December fog. 



