88 WINTER GREENERIES AT HOME. 



rectly under the hook. The diagram, figure 15, will give 

 an idea of this arrangement. When the whole is covered 

 with living green, the outline against the window will 

 not be the least of the attractions. So, in many other 

 instances in the artificial training of your vines, you can 

 use this pliable wire in executing your own designs. 



NATURAL TRAINING. 



But with all your plants, whether they need supports 

 or not, the training must be attended to in order to secure 

 regular and beautiful shapes. And this is within your 

 power more than perhaps you are aware. You can make 

 a growing plant do almost anything not directly contrary 

 to the law of its nature. It is against the nature of a 

 vine to grow in the form and manner of a tree, and at- 

 tempted compulsion would produce only a sorry imita- 

 tion ; and yet the natural growth of a vine may be con- 

 siderably modified or controlled. 



Let us see, for example, what can be done with an Ivy. 

 Take a young thrifty plant of Hedera gracilis, a rapid 

 and graceful grower. It has a 

 single stem, eight inches long, we 

 will say, at the end of which is 

 a "terminal bud," where the 

 growth is now going forward. 

 But other undeveloped buds lie 

 concealed at the axil of every leaf, 

 which may or may not start into 

 growth. If the growth is left 

 wholly uncontrolled, the single 

 Fig. 16. TRAINED IVY. stem would probably extend itself 

 to great length without one lateral 



branch. But if now you pinch off the terminal bud, or 

 take a "cutting" for use, you compel the growth of 

 some of the lateral buds. Perhaps several will start, but 

 let us suppose this of only one, at the leaf next to the 



