252 
CLIMBING PLANTS 
CLIMBING PLANTS AND TRELLISES. 
How and by wliat means a collection of climbing plants should 
be trained, is a question which has been long agitated without 
arriving at any satisfactory conclusions, and concerning which 
very opposite opinions, and arguments to support them, have been 
adduced. It is held, on the one hand, that the artificial wire trellis 
in ordinary use destroys the beauty of the plant, by robbing it of 
the natural freedom which ought to and does properly distin¬ 
guish the entire class; the strong contrast apparent between the 
flexuous branches of such a plant and the rigidly formal outline 
and filling of the trainer possessing so violent a character as to 
become a complete incongruity. The advocates of neat training 
and trellises meet this argument by others quite as strongly 
urged; they say that the act of placing a climbing plant into a 
pot reduces it to an artificial condition too obvious to be concealed 
by any mode of training, and therefore it is preferable, by high 
keeping and elaborate workmanship, to make such a state pleas¬ 
ing without endeavouring to hide its proper character. 
Between these conflicting notions we think a middle course 
maybe adopted, which shall embrace all the advantages of either; 
for with arguments so nicely balanced, it is easier, and generally 
more profitable, to take the medium ground, than to pin one’s 
ideas upon either extreme. The kind of trainer preferred by the 
admirers of the natural system is one which shall partake as 
nearly as possible of the outline and character of the support a 
climbing plant is most likely to receive in a wild state, as a tree 
or shrub, and that usually employed is the top of a small spruce 
fir, or some such thing ; against which a great objection may be 
urged, on account of the skeleton appearance its dead branches, 
denuded of leaves, must always have; this is as well known to 
its advocates as to any, and some have gone the length of pro¬ 
posing to have live plants on which to grow the climbers, thus 
meeting the objection with a vengeance ; the struggle for mastery 
between the two living plants might extend over a season, and 
for that time would afford an interest of the nature of that ex¬ 
cited by a contest between professors of the pugilistic art, but 
beyond that period it is pretty certain that one or other could 
