CHAPTER XI 
CLIMBERS FOR THE LITTLE GARDEN 
WHETHER it be in those “‘ high-walled gardens green 
and old,’’ or in the town or suburban villa garden with 
which this book more particularly deals, garden life 
would lose half its charm without the climbing plants. 
If the flowers are the pictures, the creeping and climb- 
ing plants are the poetry of the garden. It may be 
‘yon ivy-mantled tower,’’ or 
“the gardener’s lodge 
With all its casements bedded, and its walls 
And chimneys muffled in the leafy Vine.” 
A cottage porch embowered in Jasmine, Honey- 
suckle, or Traveller’s Joy, a stately pergola where 
Clematis and Rose, Vine, Honeysuckle, and Wistaria 
interlace their clinging branches in an affection born, 
like other affections, of a desire for mutual support, or 
it may be by some grey ruin where 
“ Overhead the wandering Ivy and the Vine, 
This way and that in many a wild festoon ran riot ” 
—all tell the same story, that it is the climbing frailties 
in the garden, holding on for support to more rugged, 
though perhaps grander, strength, that give it grace 
and elegance. 
There is, however, no garden planting that requires 
more careful consideration than the pianting of 
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