PART IV. 



THE PRUNING AND RENOVATION OF 

 HARDY CLIMBERS. 



The Ivy. 



The Ivy as a genus is both useful and beautiful. I 

 need not attempt any description of it, for other writers 

 have done that well — Mr. Shirley Hibberd, for instance, 

 who has, I believe, done ample justice to this tribe, 

 although I have not seen the work in which he treats 

 of it. Suffice it to say that the Ivy is a peculiar and 

 wonderful plant. A lady I knew very well had it 

 trained on the walls of her sitting-room, where it 

 seemed to thrive ; and I have known old houses covered 

 so thickly with it that no water or damp could get at 

 the outer walls, which would no doubt have admitted a 

 great deal of water during heavy rains had it not been 



there. 



The pruning or clipping of the Ivy is an essential 

 thing to its well-being as well as to its beauty. There 

 is a sort tbat will do without much of this, viz. the 

 small-leaved Helix, or common British Ivy, a beautiful, 

 close-growing, cut-leaved variety ; but the Irish Ivy, a 

 kind commonly met with, requires an annual clipping 

 if grown on houses or walls. Knife-pruning is neces- 

 sary in cases where the Ivy is grown as an ornament on 

 arbours, old trees, fences, &c, but where on walls or 

 buildings it should be annually clipped close, the 

 month of June being the proper time to do it, when 



