CLIMBERS 



The graceful abandon of climbing and trailing plants 

 adds much to the informal beauty of the rural landscape. 

 Nature's unstudied effects, ever-satisfying in their charm, 

 are replete with suggestions for the rightful use of hardy 

 plants in the wild garden, with hints of attractive 

 associations, felicitous contrasts, and refined colour- 

 schemes. Nature flings her climbers over ruined tree 

 and rocky steep, and threads her trailers through the 

 tangled hedge with a careless hand, but with an unerring 

 eye for future effect. Here, in the autumnal days, the 

 scarlet berries of the Holly glow amid the billowy, 

 smoke-grey down of the seeding Traveller's Joy that has 

 wreathed the tree in its coiling growths; here, dark and 

 glossy, the Ivy-veil hangs like suspended cataract over 

 the sheer cliff-face ; here the vivid bryony-trail gleams 

 vermilion among the bronzing brambles. In the summer, 

 the dog rose that has climbed the old hawthorn on the 

 orchard bank drapes its spreading head with arching 

 shoots blossom-laden to their very tips, scattering the 

 shell-pink petals on the emerald grass beneath. The 

 honeysuckle hangs flower-festoons from the straggling 

 blackthorn hedge, wafting its perfume down the winding 

 lane and out into the open high road beyond, where in 

 the steep banks the lavender scabious blooms in the midst 

 of the delicate tracery of the ivory-white bedstraw's 

 drooping masses, while above, from the highest spray of 

 the hedgerow, the nightshade hangs its purple, golden- 

 centred blossoms. Native climbers should certainly be 

 present in the wild garden, but with the denizens of the 

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