326 The American Flower Garden 



those. A vine-smothered house is most attractive to those pesti- 

 ferous bird neighbours, the quarrelsome, dirty English sparrows, 

 which is a sufficiently good excuse, if an aesthetic reason were 

 rejected, for keeping this vigorous creeper clipped within bounds. 

 There would seem to be no limit to its aspirations: a single plant 

 has covered a stone retaining-wall over one hundred and fifty feet 

 long and twenty feet high in twelve years. Because it has lofty 

 ambitions, the vine is admirably suited to climb tall and leggy trees 

 whose lower branches have died. Trunk and limbs are speedily 

 overspread with its green mantle, gracefully fringed where the 

 young shoots sway in the breeze from the tips of the branches. 

 Planted on unsightly telegraph and telephone and trolley poles that 

 disfigure the modern landscape, it takes off their curse for six months 

 at least. The ampelopsis is rampant, it is ubiquitous; but when 

 autumn sets it aglow with superb colour, as brilliant as the maple's, 

 few would deny that it is the best all-around vine we have. As it loses 

 its leaves in winter, giving any possible dampness they may have 

 gathered a long chance to dry, there can be no reasonable objection 

 to using it anywhere. As a matter of fact the wood and paint that 

 have had the protection of its leaves all summer are found to be in a 

 fresher condition than the exposed parts, a popular belief to the 

 contrary notwithstanding. Would that all our prejudices might 

 be so easily disproved! 



Instead of chopping down a dead tree on your grounds, try 

 draping it with the native five-leaved ampelopsis or Virginia 

 creeper, which delights to scramble over rocks, banks and bushes 

 and up into trees, living or dead, wherever it grows wild in Nature's 

 garden. Of looser, lighter, more graceful habit than its Japanese 

 cousin, and better adapted to free effects, the naturalistic treatment 

 best suits this vine that is much used on houses, nevertheless. It 



