CHAPTER XV 



VINES 



TO DRAPE, to mantle, to conceal, to screen, to frame, to 

 cover, to shade, to protect, to beautify, to transform 

 how may not vines be used ? How could beautiful garden 

 pictures be made without them ? Lacking their grace and mellow- 

 ing touch, many buildings would be intolerable eyesores, but with 

 soft drapery over them their crudities are mercifully concealed. 

 Shady pergolas, leafy flowery arches, and pendant garlands from 

 trees and over hedgerows make pictures complete in themselves. 

 The returned traveller from England misses the ivy, probably, 

 more than any other plant. There, its dark lustrous leaves clothe 

 walls, houses, chimneys, outbuildings, tree trunks, banks, even the 

 earth itself, with permanent green, toning the colour scale of every 

 scene in town or country into richer, deeper harmony, clinging, as it 

 were, to the very hearts of the people on their historic ruins, their 

 churches and their literature. If the ubiquitous ivy were to be sud- 

 denly exterminated, what a raw, glaring, red-brick England it would 

 be! Only when we realise what the Mother Country might look like 

 stripped of it, and how lavishly blessed she is with it, do we pity our 

 own poverty with no reliably hardy indigenous evergreen vine to 

 take its place. From the artist gardener's standpoint it is one of 

 our greatest lacks. True, the ivy will grow here, but only under 

 certain conditions, and not as if it were really at home and altogether 

 happy. The bright sunshine of Northern winters sometimes proves 

 more damaging than our hot, dry summers, and even on the shady 

 side of buildings, where it is always safest to plant it, it may be 



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