286 
TRAILING PLANTS, AND THEIR CULTURE. 
and it is desirable to cultivate them as flower-borders, trailing plants will be found 
particularly suitable. The smaller or stronger sorts can be employed, as the 
occasion may demand. In these instances, as well as on common borders, where 
the mounds we have described cannot be made, it will be advisable to put a few 
loose stones over the surface of the soil. These will support the stems and branches 
of the plants, and hold them up more prominently to the eye. 
In conservatories which have the plants arranged in beds, and planted out 
therein, and in other houses that are furnished with raised pits, there is commonly 
a great baldness and nakedness about the sides of the walks, and an evident want 
of some lively edging. This might be readily supplied by a row of small trailers, 
planted in a gutter on the top of the wall, or just within the wall in the one case, 
and also by a border of trailers immediately within the curb-stone or artificial 
edging in the other. 
We have seen numerous plants growing wild on the old walls about pleasure- 
grounds, and contributing materially to take off their stiffness. We have likewise 
observed plants cultivated on the top of walls in some places, in order to take off 
the extreme straightness and regularity of their upper outline. But nothing would 
be so suitable nor so pretty in such circumstances as trailers. Even Ivy planted 
in a gutter on the top of a wall, and made to form a kind of verdant crown to it, 
bringing it no lower than about two or three feet from the summit, would 
greatly relieve its formality. 
As edgings to flower-borders, where box or grass cannot easily be had, or would 
not be so desirable, trailers answer admirably, because their growth is mostly 
regular, abundant, and capable of being trimmed to any extent. They are valuable, 
moreover, for placing inside (about six or nine inches from) a margin of turf to a 
flower-border ; composing a band, which harmonizes well with the grass verge. 
We have hinted, however, that we deem them most worthy of being made 
use of for filling (or planting round the edges of) rustic baskets, vases, &c. In 
the modern style of flower-gardening, there is ordinarily a flatness, and con- 
sequent dullness or monotony about the beds, which offends the lover of pictu- 
resqueness. To remove or vary this, a few of the principal beds should be formed 
into raised baskets, the sides being composed of rough pieces of wood, with the 
bark uninjured. Or, where the beds are large enough, a portion of the centre of 
the most conspicuous and the largest should be so appropriated. It is over the 
edges of these that trailers would show themselves to the greatest advantage. 
And the same objects would likewise make agreeable features on lawns. They 
are, we know, much employed in the latter localities : but it is the use of trailers 
for them to which we now call attention. In more than one place, too, we have 
noticed retired parts of the pleasure-grounds set apart to groups of rude vases, 
baskets, and heaps, made of old lumps of the branches, trunks, or roots of trees ; 
and for covering these, or depending over their sides, trailers would be exceedingly 
serviceable. 
