NOOKERIES ON THE HOME GROUNDS. 309 



better than the intelligent employment of climbers and 

 creepers will create such pleasant, artistic surprises in these 

 nooks, and illustrate the proper way to treat them. With 

 them alone we can do wonders. Take that old stump be- 

 fore you and wreathe it with festoons of the long, crimson 

 flowers of the trumpet creeper — Tecoma radicans. Nothing 

 in its way can be finer except the employment of 

 Tecoma grandijhra, with its great orange-colored flowers. 

 So vigorous and stout are these climbers that they soon 

 grow into a tossing, wild mass of leaves and trumpet-shaped 

 flowers, to the entire obliteration from view of the old trunk 

 over which they grow. Do not confuse, however, these trum- 

 pet flowers with those of the scarlet trumpet-vine or honey- 

 suckle — Lonicera sempervirens — with the bright, glossy, 

 green leaves that often last nearly all winter. Every one 

 thinks of honeysuckle flowers as sweet-scented and yellow, 

 white or red ; but how many stop to examine the rich, glos- 

 sy shades of honeysuckle leaves, so admirably adapted for 

 carpeting bare spots or draping heaps of stone and stumps 

 and tree trunks ? There are many varieties of honeysuckles 

 which are, every one of them, worthy of employment. 



In some of these sheltered nooks we might even use 

 the unequalled English ivy, particularly if we use it as a 

 carpet ; but we certainly can have the so-called Japan ivy, 

 Ampelopsis Veitchii, or Pricuspidata, in this country the most 

 perfect of hardy creepers for clinging by rootlets to stone or 

 wooden surfaces. Few plant effects can surpass in summer 

 tlie glossy color and artistic forms of the leaves and tendrils 

 of the Japan ivy, or the crimson and gold of its autumn 

 tints. But we must not forget the other varieties of Ampe- 



