TRAILING PLANTS, AND THEIR CULTURE. 
235 
While the best of all uses to which they can be put, is, in our opinion, the 
decoration of rustic baskets, vases, pieces of the trunks of trees scooped out so as 
to form a basin in the centre, and this basin filled with soil and trailing plants, or 
raised beds, bordered by piles of wood in a rustic manner, or, in fact, anywhere or 
in anything that is not too formal, where their branches will depend over the sides 
of some object, and be kept from touching the ground, and apparently mingling 
witli the soil. 
Of the mode of suspending trailing or half-climbing plants in pots or baskets, 
in order to give variety and liveliness to the greenhouse and the stove, we have 
spoken, not long since, at considerable length, and need not now recur to the 
subject, save to observe that, while we then pressed the propriety of the practice 
on account of improving the aspect of plant-houses, and rendering them more 
diversified and gay, we would here advocate it for its exact suitability to the 
nature and peculiar habits of the plants. The beauty of a trailer is entirely lost 
when it is standing amongst a general collection, even though it should be placed 
on a raised stage or shelf, and quite in the front of it. Its elegance and symmetry 
can only be shown by suspension. Of course there are a multitude of dwarf 
climbers, which, as we affirmed in the article above referred to, are equally or better 
suited for suspension in this way ; but we shall not be far wrong in considering 
such species as genuine trailers. 
In cultivating trailing plants on plain flower borders, it should be the endeavour 
of the grower to raise each specimen on a little mound, formed of turfy earth, and 
about a foot square (more or less), according to the extent of ground which the 
species is adapted to cover. This mound may be about three, four, or six inches 
above the usual level, and just so large that the shoots of the plants may hang 
down over its edges, and show the true character of the specimen ; otherwise it 
will have the tame, commonplace appearance of an ordinary herbaceous plant. 
When trailers are planted on rock-work — a system of treatment which is 
eminently appropriate — they are generally put in crevices or hollows, which require 
all their growth to fill them, and the interest of the plants is thus hidden. Instead 
of this, they ought to be set in places where the soil can be made up nearly level 
with the rock, so that the very earliest extension of the shoots may be over that 
rock. Nothing is more charming than nice healthy shoots, clothed with inflo- 
rescence, lying over a rocky surface ; and without some such contrivance as we 
have hinted at, this beauty cannot be attained. 
But trailing plants may be put on rocks in another and more interesting way. 
In places where stone is abundant, plenty of rough pieces are mostly to be met 
with, having a depression or hollow on one side ; and if some kinds of trailers are 
furnished with a little earth in such a position, they will soon establish themselves, 
and flourish remarkably well. This is the case with several of the Sedums, and 
with the pretty wild Thyme. 
Where small banks of earth exist on the sides of mounds, or on natural slopes, 
