CHAPTER XVIII 

 ENGLISH EFFECTS WITH HARDY CLIMBERS 



The fine art of decorating good architecture and transmuting the bad, 

 marrying vines to trees, and throwing a veil or mist over ever- 

 green shrubs like rhododendrons 



I AM sometimes tempted to believe that climbers are the most 

 valuable of all ornamental plants, because they are the only 

 ones that have the power of transforming ugliness into beauty. 

 And America has a thousand times as much ugliness to conceal as 

 England. English houses are built of brick or stone; we still live 

 in the age of wood. England has evolved a style of her own; we 

 have not, and everywhere we see anarchy in domestic architecture. 

 As you approach an English village the whole collection of 

 houses seems beautiful and you are impressed by its permanence, 

 its national character, and the ever-present sense of proportion. 

 The morning I returned to America I saw my native land with 

 new eyes a riotous array of wildly shaped and wildly coloured 

 wooden buildings pretentious and perishable. Our country is 

 beautiful enough, but the works of man do not harmonize with it 

 as they do in England. Until we build permanently and in a 

 style of our own, our greatest need will be something to hide the 

 ugliness of most of our buildings. 



The worst of it is that you cannot cover a wooden dwelling 

 without seeming to smother it. Either it seems to pant for air or 

 else it tends to look damp and unhealthy. On the other hand, a 

 brick cottage can be covered with ivy without making it look 



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