CLIMBERS AND CREEPERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 April 1939, Page 3

CLIMBERS AND CREEPERS

PROBLEM OF TRAINING. The numerous hardy climbers which we possess are rarely seen to advantage, owing to their being stiffly trained against walls. Indeed, a great number of hardy climbers have gone out of cultivation owing to insufficiency of ideas as to their proper use. One of the happiest of all ways of using them is that of training them in a free manner against trees; in this way many good effects may be secured. The trees must not, of course, be like those crowded in shrubberies, but standing alone. On low trees the climbers will lie like garlands; in tall ones the stem only may at first be adorned. Some vigorous climbers would in time ascend the tallest trees. Is there anything more beautiful than a veil of Clematis montana suspended from the branch of a tall tree?

Various handsome plants may be seen to great advantage in this way, apart from the well-known and popular climbing plants. There are, for example, many species of clematis which never come into general cultivation, but which are as beautiful as climbers can be. The same may be said of the honeysuckles, wild vines and various other plants. Many native trees and shrubs are garlanded with creepers, and many of the exotic climbers could be grown in the same —for example, on banks and in hedgerows. Naked stems of the trees, however, have the first claim on our attention in planting climbers. There would seldom be need to fear injury to well-grown trees.

A garden of creepers! Yes, why not? A most interesting garden could be made of nothing but creeper, twiners, and climbers. It would not be a garden of trim formal beds, as the growth of such plants could not —in fact, should ■not —be kept within set bounds. What groups and clusters of climbing roses, honeysuckles, jasmines, clematis, ivies, one might possess in such a garden! In thinking over this matter of the creepers and their uses, those who have not made a study of them may be aided in consideration of their merits if they group them according to the season in which' they are most effective. Cotoneaster microphylla and C. simonsi and their varieties are good wall plants for winter effect, ; as well as for training up a pole or planting on the top of a mound or rockwork. Escallonia macrantha, Berberis Darwini and B. stdnphylla and other of the Chinese Berberis are useful to cover walls up to 12ft or 14ft. Chimonanthus fragrans should be planted for the sake of the delicious spicy scent of its flowers in winter. For sheltered places, magnolias are grand-looking plants in winter, their large leaves being so fine, but they often require to be protected in severe weather and should not be given exposed sites. For spring we have a long list. There is the indispensable Clematis montana grandiflora. Wistaria sinensis and alba are both good for covering high walls or for training wherever a rapidgrowing creeper is required. Forsythia viridissima and Cydonia japonica are plants of slower growth, but are both desirable for making out the outlines of panels or for covering buttress piers.

Yellow jasmines bloom early. Lastly, the spring offers use a few roses, especially the smaller types, such as the old pink China, or monthly, the earliest as well as the latest to flower.

It is in the summer when the creepers are at their best, for then the rose, clematis, honeysuckle, ipomeas, magnolias and jasmines are in season, and what visions of beauty the mere mention of their names conjures up!.

Roses alone are capable of adorning the most commonplace buildings. Besides these there is the passion flower (Passiflora coefulea). The Statutonia hexaphylla is a rapid-growing creeper. The Birthworts, Aristolochia sipho and A. Tomentosa, are good climbing plants, the last-named having silvery leaves. For warm, sheltered places, the Ceanothuses are beautiful, freely pro-, ducing blue flowers of various shades. Besides the hardy creepers, a long list might be added of summer or.annual creepers. bright and effective, such as the trapaelum, lophospermum, maurandya, convolvulus and morning glory. In the autumn there is much beauty of leaf, fruit and berry, if less blossom. The Virginian creepers are then in all the splendour of crimson and gold, with the bright berries of the pyracantha and the cotoneaster, a most fitting and appropriate autumn decoration.

Again, hardy climbers in gardens should, for the most part, be what they are in their native places—trailing over trees, shrubs, stumps, banks or such artificial supports as railings and rustic work.

No plant bears repression and continual pruning as poorly as a vigorous climber. Moreover, its beauty is rarely spoilt by pruning. The evergreen that does not climb is often more amenable to training on walls, as, for example, the evergreen euonymus, the pyracantha and certain evergreen barberries. The value of the hardy native American and other vines for covering wall surfaces must not be forgotten.

Occasionally one sees a beautiful climbing rose rambling over a tree, and perhaps no garden picture is more lovely than the one formed by such a plant when in flower. A selection of the more hardy and pest-resistant varieties provides a wide scope. A section of rose that is seldom seen, yet unsurpassed for this purpose, is the white —also the yellow—Banksian roses. Thornless and vigorous, they are capable of climbing to the top.of fairly high trees. Furthermore —and this is sufficient to make them a paragon among roses —they are highly diseaseresistant.