METHODS OF TRAINING CLIMBING PLANTS. 
65 
objects growing beneath them, and thus again assists in operating to their 
exclusion. 
Other circumstances which conduce to a like result, are not, however, lacking. 
The more woody kinds, especially, are notorious for their shyness in the production 
of flowers ; some remaining for several years, and covering an immense superficies, 
before a single blossom is developed. Connected with this peculiarity, the rapidity 
of their enlargement may be noted, and the inconvenience they occasion in 
furnishing suitable borders or boxes for their roots, as well as the difficulty of 
obtaining access to the latter for the administration of water, and of reaching their 
branches in order to keep them properly trimmed. 
Confining the remarks thus submitted almost entirely to climbers fastened to 
the rafters of a house, instances are exceedingly numerous in which the reasons 
assigned actually prevent their cultivation. Whatever mode of management, 
therefore, be suggested which will set aside those objections, reduce the plants to a 
moderate size, render their treatment as easy as that of an ordinary shrubby 
specimen, and impel them to bear fiowers sooner and more freely ; must unquestion- 
ably meet with approbation, and ensure immediate and little less than universal 
execution. Such a system, already carried out in some places, but even in them not 
adequately esteemed, and of which the great mass of culturists seem as yet to be 
completely ignorant, is here to be exhibited. 
It consists simply in growing the specimen in pots, like the common, erect, self- 
supported shrubs of our plant-houses, and training their shoots spirally round a 
more or less circular trellis affixed to the outside of the pot. By the employment 
of a plan of this nature, with frequent pruning in particular cases, we have met with 
climbers clothing a trellis not more than four feet high, and so requiring no larger 
space than a small shrub ; flowering more profusely when merely of three or four 
years'* standing, than if they had been three times that age, and had covered a six- 
fold greater surface under the usual treatment. 
The flowering at so early a stage being the most extraordinary part of this 
statement, its exciting causes become points well worthy of investigation. To 
make this inquiry, it will be essential first to make known what are the conditions 
so inimical to the protrusion of inflorescence which attend the culture generally 
bestowed. Two classes of these meet our view. 
First, the position and quantity of the earth in which the plant is placed have a 
material and potent influence on its developments. Unless the structure be what 
is called a conservatory, in which spacious beds or borders of exposed soil form the 
main features, and which will admit of the climbing plants being placed in them 
wherever they are required, the prevailing practice is to prepare for them stone, 
wooden, or slate boxes of earth, or small borders, beneath the stage on which the 
other shrubs are arranged, and to make those receptacles of a size proportionate to 
the estimated extension of the roots. A situation so subject to all the droppings of 
water that drain from the plants above, — so utterly secluded from the rays of the 
VOL. VTII. NO. LXXXVII. K 
