52 
A FEW FLOWERS 
■uni a-^ they renew themselves annually from seed they may be properly considered hardy. For the same purposes the 
Bindweed (Calystegia dahurica) is very pleasing. 
As a rule vines should not be trained in any formal manner. If you would have them exhibit their best graces they 
must be allowed to grow uncontrolled. All know the use that vines are commonly put to — that of covering the walls of the 
house, furnishing shade for the porch or arbor, 
and the covering of screens and trellises. 
Besides these, almost every place of any size 
offers opportunities for the growth of vines in 
a freer and more natural way that will greatly 
add to the charm and delight of the garden. 
Perhaps a neglected shrubbery, unsightly in 
itself, will afford support for such easily-grown 
things as the Honeysuckles, 
Clematis vitalba, Clematis flam- 
mula, and Clematis Virginia, or 
the common wild Morning Glory, so plentiful in many places, 
would be quite at home here. An unsightly fence might be 
partly concealed and made a thing of beauty with climbing 
Roses, Honeysuckles or Clematis, or an old tree, past its 
prime and beginning to be unsightly, would be the very 
thing on which to grow such vigorous vines as the Aristo- 
fochia sypho, Wistaria, the Trumpet Vine and the common 
Virginia Creeper. In how many places are seen evergreens 
in a half-dead condition, which only procrastination has spared from the 
axe, and as unsightly as could well be ; but nothing could be better on 
which to grow the large-dowered Clematis,which furnishes a profusion of 
lovely bloom no description can realize. Some vines, like the Golden 
Japan Honeysuckles, planted on the grass, will pile themselves up in 
masses, and if any shrub is within reach will finally clamber over it, 
producing an effect entirely pleasing. There is nothing more charming 
in nature than the combination of shrub or tree with wild vines. Who 
has not seen the living canopy of green formed by the Wild Grape over 
the top of some tree or the stronger-growing shrubs ; or how some wild 
vine converts a thicket of brambles and an old fence into objects of beauty that the most ambitious gardener might copy 
lat we want, 1 we would enjoy the keenest delight in gardening, is to bring nature closer to us. 
1 here is, perhaps, nothing in the world of plant life more lovely than the delicate tracery of low climbing things wedde 
to the bushes in all northern and temperate regions of the earth. Perishing like the grass, they are contented and safe in tl 
LARGE-FLOWERED CLEMATIS. 
