October, 1909 



THE GARDE N MAGAZI X E 



127 



harmony. If you doubt this walk down 

 any street in July and watch the Crimson 

 Ramblers and purple clematis swearing at 

 the red brick walls! The only safe thing to 

 use against red brick are white flowers and 

 green foliage. The warm colors in brick 

 and stone are the reds and browns; the cool 

 ones are the grays, blues, and yellows. 

 Against light, delicate or neutral back- 

 grounds you may use strongly colored flowers, 

 like red roses, orange trumpet creepers, 

 purple and rose clematis and yellow ramblers. 

 But the brick that is warm in winter looks 

 too hot in summer and to cool it you can do 

 one of two things. First swathe it with 

 English ivy, Japanese ivy, euonymus, or Vir- 

 ginia creeper. Second, you may decorate it 

 with Clematis panicidata, white cluster roses, 

 or white wistaria and the like. 



The greatest practical difficulty with brick 

 and stone is that the tendril-bearers cannot 

 get up a smooth surface, while the twiners 

 must always have support. Of course, 

 chicken wire or wooden trellises can be used, 

 but they have a trifling look against massive 

 buildings. So far as I know, the architects 

 have never solved the problem of growing 

 slender, flowering climbers on smooth brick 

 or stone. In such cases 

 people generally use the 

 self-climbing Japanese or 

 English ivy, the euonymus 

 or the self-climbing variety 

 of Virginia creeper. How 

 little imagination we com- 

 monly employ is shown by 

 the thousands of wistarias A^ 



trained up iron rods in Hrl 



New York. They look to 

 me like enchanted prin- 

 cesses with their arms 

 frozento their sides, until 

 someone comes to release 

 them, so that they may 

 entwine balconies, embel- 

 lish window sills, and 

 envelope the whole build- 

 ing with an atmosphere of 

 poetry. 



CLIMBERS FOR GARDEN 

 WALLS 



The principles govern- 

 ing climbers for house 

 walls apply also to 'garden 

 walls, but the garden wall 

 gives us some splendid 

 opportunities in addition. 

 I used to dread the idea 

 of high garden walls, but 

 I believe we must borrow 

 this custom from England. 

 The seven reasons therefor 

 I have stated in Country 

 Life in A merica for Novem- 

 ber. Only one will be de- 

 veloped here. The shelter 

 of the garden wall enables 

 Englishmen to grow many 

 of the greatest treasures 

 of subtropical regions, in- 

 cluding shrubs trained like A n arch of Biusi 

 climbers. Among such 



treasures are the true myrtle, the poet's 

 laurel, Magnolia grandiflora, the large-leaved 

 Algerian ivy, the pomegranate, laurustinus, 

 and camellia— an intoxicating array of ever- 

 greens when contrasted with the solitary 

 pair that are hardy with us — ivy and 

 euonymus. 



Of course, the Bostonians could never 

 grow these evergreen climbers outdoors even 

 behind high walls, and even at Philadelphia 

 these plants might not be both hardy and 

 evergreen. But New York and Philadelphia 

 would doubtless pick up other treasures 

 they could enjoy to the full in no other way, 

 e. g., the evergreen magnolias, an ivy from 

 Northern China, and the cherry laurel from 

 Schipka Pass. Moreover, it is possible that, 

 on their north and west walls, Japanese 

 honeysuckle would hold their leaves all 

 winter; also the memorial rose and the 

 scarlet honeysuckle. And by the same device 

 Baltimore and Washington might be able 

 to grow some of the plants that are evergreen 

 at Augusta, such as the Cherokee and 

 Macartney rose, the cross vine, the Carolina 

 jasmine, the Confederate jasmine, Irish and 

 Algerian ivy, the dwarf fig, the Constance 

 Elliott passion flower and several bignonias. 



Rambler roses. One of the many interesting ways of training climbers, to 

 which we should give more thought 



Among the famous deciduous plants 

 from warmer climes which the English (in 

 the extreme South) can grow on walls are 

 the Ceanothus of California, the Lapageria 

 of Chile and the Clianthus of Australia. 

 But I doubt if any climbers from those 

 countries can ever be a great success east of 

 the Rockies. For a plant that has never 

 encountered zero weather in its own home 

 can never do so elsewhere. In England 

 the great problem is to get enough sunshine 

 in summer to ripen the wood sufficiently 

 to withstand the mild English winter where 

 zero weather is unknown. South walls help 

 them solve that problem. But in America 

 no walls can keep roots from freezing in 

 zaro weather. Nevertheless, I have faith 

 to believe that walls would help us grow 

 many fine plants that belong to the south 

 in any given locality. For example, the 

 winter sweet and winter jasmine will open 

 their fragrant flowers in March or earlier 

 in New York and Philadelphia and Forsythia 

 suspensa is very beautiful when planted 

 above a wall and allowed to hang down. 

 Philadelphia can grow the white jasmine of 

 the poets on garden walls. 



After considering the house and garden 

 walls a man's next duty is 

 to study his porch and 

 pergola, and these intro- 

 duce a new problem — the 

 column. Here again the 

 first question is not, 

 "Which vine do I like 

 best?" but "Is the archi- 

 tecture good or bad, refined 

 or rustic?" For English 

 experience seems to have 

 evolved this principle: On 

 beautiful columns foliage 

 is more important than 

 flowers; on rough columns 

 flowers seem more impor- 

 tant than foliage. 



This principle grows out 

 of the fact that leaf-forms 

 are displayed to the best 

 advantage by a white back- 

 ground while flowers are 

 usually best set off by a 

 dark background. 



CLIMBERS FOR PORCH AND 

 ARBOR 



Therefore, if your porch 

 or pergola has classical 

 columns of stone or con- 

 crete, the most appropriate 

 climbers are those that 

 have leaf forms of classic 

 beauty, such as the wild- 

 grapes, the akebias, the 

 kudzu, cinnamon, and 

 Madeira vines, and the 

 wonderful new species of 

 Ampelopsis from China, 

 in all of which the flowers 

 are of secondary import- 

 ance. Among the flower- 

 ing climbers, roses, clem- 

 atis, and wistaria have 

 sufficient beauty of leaf 



