CHAPTER VI. 

 The Ivy, and its Uses in Parisian Gardens. 



[HE Irish Ivy is a very old friend of curs : one \ve have seen 

 beautifying many positions, and one, as we may have 

 thought, sufficiently appreciated and employed. Gaiety 

 and grace I was led to expect in Parisian gardens, but that they should 

 take up our Hibernian friend, so partial to showers and our mossy old 

 walls, and bring him out to such advantage in the neighbourhood 

 of new boulevards and sumptuous architecture, was a very pleasing 

 surprise. That " a rare old plant is the ivy green when it creepeth 

 o'er ruins old," we Britons all know, but that it is no less admirable 

 when mantling with its dark polished green objectionable surfaces 

 in winter, would not appear to have yet sufficiently dawned upon 

 us. Apart from the fact that the Ivy is the best of all evergreen 

 climbers, it is the best, of all plants for beautifying the aspect of 

 town and suburban gardens in winter, not to say all gardens. The 

 Parisian gardeners know this fully, and they, taking the Ivy out of 

 the catalogue of things that receive chance culture, or no culture at 

 all, bring it from obscurity and make of it a thing of beauty. To 

 rob the monotonous garden railings of their nakedness and openness, 

 they use it most extensively, and there are parts about Passy where 

 the Ivy, densely covering the railings, makes a beautiful wall of 

 polished green along the fine wide asphalte footways, so that even 

 in the dead of winter it is refreshing to walk along them. And if 

 it does so much for the street, how much more for the garden ? 

 Instead of the inmates of the house gazing from the windows into 



