YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 23, 1 December 1939, Page 41

YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

By

Ann Earncliff

Brown

(No. 11)

" Some Climbers " N the north side of my cottage O the Glory Vine is clothing the trellised porch with cool green leaves. These provide grateful shade for the sun room, so delightful in winter but almost too cheerful now that its deep primrose-tinted walls reflect more ardent rays. With foliage and habit much like the grape, the Glory Vine holds no promise of luscious clusters of fruit, but in autumn gives such a feast of colour in a riot of "yellow and pale and gold and hectic red,’ that it would be churlish to ask for more. Lovely as it is, I do not recommend this to be grown in a small garden or even in a very formally kept larger garden, unless there is ample labour to cope with the falling leaves. These big bay leaves scattering before the wind have a definite charm for me, but when their glow has faded, and only drifts of crisp brown leaves remain to be raked up and carried to the compost heap, I am a less enthusiastic lover of the "Vitus" than at present. Adaptable and beautiful in many situations, clematis-by a careful: selection of varieties-makes a valuable contribution to garden climbers through a long season of flowering effectiveness. New Zealanders know the aesthetic value of the starry white flowers shining from the green gloom of the Native bush. Travellers’ Joy, so tiny, but so generously flowered is a kindly covering

for a dead limb of a tree, an unsightly piece of fence, or a garden tool shed. Don’t sigh and say regretfully, "Oh! I'd love to grow that lovely big blue one, but we’ve no place to put it. There are Crimson Ramblers on the Pergola and American Pillars on the Porch." Plant your Jack manii, or other favourite large-flowered clematis, so that the roses shade the roots and the lovely flowers, turning up to the light the blossoms love, will enhance the beauty of the roses and themselves gain by the assgciation with the gay clusters. I have a large pink-striped clematis and a very beautiful blue thus grown, and they are truly a delight. Down by the river a shell pink clematis with medium flowers embraces the trunk of a willow which leans on a long slope made exquisite by these almost waxen blooms, ; The strong dark-toned purples and almost royal blues look better, I think, grown alone, but C. Indivisa, C. Foetida, and C. Hexasepala (New Zealand Natives) are evergreen and excellent for training up through trees in a woodland garden. A cabbage tree which forks close to the ground is an effective support for one of these in my garden, Wire netting helps to keep this lovely curtain nicely adjusted. "Silk curled and silvery bright" clematis blooms are beautiful in the autumn of their lives as in the hey-day of their youth. Grow them, and from them learn this precious secret.