64 
METHODS OF TRAINING CLIMBING PLANTS. 
that prevail. At Chatsworth, where extensive shelter is required, huts made of 
plaited straw, about an inch in thickness, covered with a small thatched roof, and 
maintained in their proper position by spars or stakes of wood being interwoven with 
the straw, are found extremely serviceable, as they exclude wet as well as frost, 
and thus subserve two important ends. Any favourite mode may be adopted that 
ensures an adequate protection without bringing the branches of the plant in 
contact with it, and which allows of air and light being liberally admitted in fine 
weather. With evergreens, no means should be employed for fastening the branches 
into a smaller compass, and the plants can be covered exactly as they stand. 
Deciduous species may have their shoots slightly drawn together to save materials, 
and give their outline a more suitable shape ; but they must not be too closely 
confined. Those taken from the greenhouse, will sometimes protrude their leaves 
and shoots sooner than the common shrubs ; for which reason the protection ought 
to be continued somewhat later, with increased care, however, to provide them with 
air and light. After the external screen has been discontinued, a winters layer of 
litter over the roots will usually be beneficial. 
Two facts that have lately been made known to us concerning the protection of 
exotics, may be related as a fit conclusion of this paper. Plants of a particular 
species, left entirely uncovered, have been less harmed by frost than others of the 
same kind which were thickly enveloped in close materials ; the difference evidently 
being due to the additional tenderness acquired by the former from constant 
seclusion. Others, again, for which no shelter was provided, were conspicuously 
frozen ; but those of them which happened to be shaded by trees from the direct 
rays of the sun recovered, while the rest were destroyed. The first of these teaches 
the impropriety of applying too dense and continuous a covering ; and the lesson 
to be learned from the latter is that, though the common mode of remedying frost 
in greenhouses by the instant application of cold water cannot be pursued in the 
open air, any simple shading which effectively obstructs the sun’s rays, will, if 
thrown over the plant early in the morning, and suffered to remain till a thaw takes 
place, most probably save the specimen, unless the frost has positively destroyed its 
tissue. 
METHODS OF TRAINING CLIMBING PLANTS. 
A large proportion of those who possess only small greenhouses or stoves, and 
who consequently wish to economise room as much as possible, are constrained to 
refuse to admit, or to cultivate very sparingly, one of the most elegant of all tribes 
of plants ; — such as possess climbing habits. The tendency, too, of many of these 
to extend themselves to a long distance, and to bear ample and spreading foliage, 
causes them, when trained to the roof of a house, to afford too much shade to the 
