CLIMBERS 215 



English winter where zero weather is unknown. South walls 

 help them solve that problem. But in America no walls can keep 

 roots from freezing in zero weather. Nevertheless, I have faith 

 to believe that walls would help us grow in any given locality 

 many fine plants that belong to the South. For example, the 

 winter sweet and winter jasmine will open their fragrant flowers 

 in March or earlier in New York and Philadelphia, and Forsythia 

 suspensa is very beautiful when planted above a wall and allowed 

 to hang down. Philadelphia can grow the white jasmine of the 

 poets on garden walls. And there are three special beauties in 

 England which I hope some of my readers will try. 



The first is the tamarix, with feathery gray foliage and 

 feathery pink bloom, which never looks well as a shrub (except 

 when kept low as on plate 105), but is unspeakably lovely when 

 trained against a wall, as at Trinity College, Cambridge. 



The second is Xanthoceras sorbifolia, which has foliage like 

 a mountain ash and white flowers marked with pinkish purple. 

 I saw a specimen about twenty-five feet high on the house of Mr. 

 R. Irwin Lynch, the scholarly and companionable curator of the 

 Cambridge Botanical Garden. 



The third is lemon verbena, which sometimes covers a space 

 twelve feet square on English house walls. It is the only wall 

 plant with fragrant foliage that I know and it must be pleasant to 

 have every breeze from April to September bear the odour of lemon 

 into the house. I wish my friends in Baltimore, Cincinnati, and 

 St. Louis would try this. 



A moment ago I said that garden walls may shelter more 

 precious climbers than house walls. They have another advan- 

 tage. Even if you desire a perfectly smooth brick wall there is a 

 good way of training climbers that cannot climb alone. For, 



