May 22. 
COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
121 
gardening have been at it these thirty years, and yet ! 
you see very little done to define the difference between 
dressed Ivy, and the poet’s Ivy, on the “ dismantled 
castle.” I have seen a Yew hedge five-and-thirty feet 
high, at Boyton, beyond Salisbury, the seat of the late 
Mr. Lambert, but I have seen Ivy higher than that, and 
as even, on the face of it, as this page. I think the 
best kept Ivy I every saw was at the “ Priory,” near 
Edgeware, a seat belonging to the Marquis of Aber- 
cromby. Mr. Eoggo, a friend of mine, had the manage¬ 
ment of this Ivy for many years. You might call at j 
the end of every ten years, and find the Ivy there still 
looking as young as at the first. But the first thing to 
learn about dressed Ivy is to forget that there is any 
thing like naturally-grown Ivy in the world, and 
getting rid of the idea of covered ruins, and all 
poetic fancies about Ivy. It is very difficult for one to 
manage it so as to make, as it were, a coat of paint to 
the wall with it. When Ivy is well done, however, no 
paint will ever equal it to hide defects, or to secure the 
wall from the weather ; but without good management 
Ivy is often a dangerous covering to some walls, indeed 
to most walls, as, if it is allowed to grow out naturally, 
on reaching the top of the wall the rain will beat 
against it, run down the branches, and reach the wall, 
then lodge in the mortar seams, this softens the mortar, 
the roots then get firmer hold of it, and from that time 
destruction goes on, deeper and deeper, by every sue- t 
ceeding shower, till the wall is a ruin. 
The other side of the picture shows the Ivy leaves 
throwing off the wet from leaf to leaf, as the slate upon 
the roof, and all below the leaves is dry, the mortar is 
thus secured from the weather, and the face of the 
bricks or stone is so thickly covered by the roots of the 
Ivy, in addition to the covering of leaves, that the 
alternate actions of wet and dry, frost and fair weather, t 
have little or no effect upon it. In short, there is nothing 
known to us which preserves buildings so effectually as 
well-kept Ivy, but it must be well kept from the beginning. 
It must have its yearly pruning, just as much as the 
Peach-tree against the wall, and that from the middle 
of April to the middle or end of May, according to the 
season, and also according as other pressing works will 
allow of, but the annual pruning should not be delayed 
beyond May. Another looking over will be necessary 
during the last half of July, but under a regular system | 
this July trimming will be a comparative easy work. 
Let us now begin at the beginning. In the year 1825, 
I planted some hundreds of cuttings of Ivy, in May, 
against the ruins of an old church, or monastery, in the 
bottom of the pleasure grounds at Altyre, near Forres, ! 
and nine out of ten of them took root. The cuttings 
were from nine to twelve inches long, and were planted 
as Mr. Rivers directs for Boursault Roses: two buds 
only left out of the ground. The “ Burn” ran close by 
the old church, and the cuttings were watered very often 
all that summer; about a thousand yards of Box edgings 
were planted that year in that garden, without a single 
root, and, without, I believe, the death of a single slip. 
Cuttings of Ivy will succeed, with proper care, if they 
are put in any day from the middle of September to the 
end of May; and, for aught that I know to the contrary, 
if put in any day in the year. 
Rooted plants make the next step, and the next; the 
last step of all being Ivy in pots, from six to fifteen feet 
long or more, to cover a wall at once. I may observe, 
in passing, that from the middle to the end of May is 
about the best time in the year to plant Ivy out of pots. 
At that time there is no time lost; the bearded fibres 
will not wither by standing idle—they cling at once to 
the wall, “ if”—but few things come or go without an 
“if”—there are two ifs here—i/’the new ivy is watered | 
thoroughly and liberally for the first two months, and if 
the shoots are properly nailed; but nailing up newly i 
planted Ivy of this length is different from all other 
nailing, and very few attend to it. 
No matter how long the shoot is, every inch of it ought 
to touch the surface of the wall, and that can only be 
done by using four times as many nails as would nail a 
grape vine of the same length. When long ivy is 
planted in winter, or early in the spring, and the shoots 
are merely fastened to the wall, the work is like “love’s 
labour lost,”—the small branch fibres dry and perish, and 
the stem never gets a proper hold on the wall; it 
bulges out, here and there, and when it is old the 
chances are that it will draw the wet to the wall, and 
be an eye sore to him who would have a smooth face . 
of leaves. 
There is no plant which pays better for good watering 
for the first three or four years than Ivy; Salvias and 
Chrysanthemums are the next to it in that respect. As 
long aslvy clings to the wall, nine persons out of ten thiuk 
it is “ all right ;” but it is not too much to say, that for 
the first ten or fifteen years about two-thirds of the 
last year’s growth ought to be pruned off in May. 
There is not a plant we grow out-of-doors, from a 
Gooseberry to an Oak, or in doors from a Verbena in a 
cottage window, to an Orange tree in the Crystal Palace, 
but requires part of the pruning or cutting to consist of 
“ tliinning-out.” The Ivy is the only plaut I can think 
of whose management seems, by common consent, an 
exemption from the universal rule; and yet, with the 
single exception of the Gooseberry-bush, no plant in the 
catalogue suffers in after-years more from the neglect 
of early thinning-out than the-Ivy. The true manage 
meut of dressed Ivy has never yet been written in our 
language, nor shall it be to-day, or to-morrow either. 
Suffice it to say, that the question is opened, that the 
necessity of the thing is made apparent, and that the 
thing itself is the easiest thing in the world to manage, 
if it is begun in time, and is continued on a regular 
system of yearly pruning, thinning, and stopping. 
“ In time,” means, in the management of Ivy, any 
period within twenty years after the Ivy is planted. The 
Ivy in good ground is so prolific of growth during the 
first twenty years, that you might cut away eight parts 
out of ten of it without hurting or diminishing its 
value, as a protecting plant, or conservative properties. 
There are some few who can well afford to go to a 
great expense about the management of their Ivy. I 
know some of them who make this a hobby, and pay 
more attention to it than they do to the lawn before 
their windows; but their rules would not suit the great 
bulk of the world. I shall, therefore, give the rules 
which I would follow myself, and I know they will 
answer just as well as the most expensive ways, and 
give very little trouble. 
As long as young Ivy is below the eye, or under five 
feet in height, none of the leaves need be cut off to see 
how it goes;—when you require a ladder to examine 
it, to cut away all the leaves is the cheapest way; but 
here you must differ from those who make it a hobby, 
for they never allow that. 
When a large surface is to be cut, the best instrument 
for that purpose is the one you are most accustomed to ; 
some take the hedge-shears, and cut as they would clip 
a hedge; some use the knife, or the sheep-shears; and 
some use the switch hedge-bill, which is my own 
favourite tool; it is like a Peach priming-knife, with 
a cutting edge thirty inches long, a socket ten inches 
long to receive a handle four feet long. This any black¬ 
smith could make from the description, and it is the most 
powerful of all edge implements we use in gardening; 
it ought to be sharp enough to split a hair, and a little 
practice will soon bring in the hand and eye to use it 
properly. Every hedger in Scotland uses this tool, in 
some shape or other; but one seldom sees it in England. 
I have bought them in London, however, and could cut 
