Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

On leaving Edinburgh we returned to Tweed-side, where we saw several of the old Border towers and the really fine ' stately homes ' of England. Here I was struck by the same mistake which prevails in the South. The walls and shapes of fine old houses are ruined by allowing, even on the southern and western aspects, a rampageous growth of coarse creepers, such as Ivy, the common Virginia Creeper, and Ampelopsis veitchii. This last is the most insidious and destructive of all, as no kitten compared to a cat, and no baby donkey compared to an old one, could ever more completely change its character from youth to age than does this creeper. When first planted, the tiny, delicate growth that creeps up the mullioned windows is as pretty and harmless as anything can be ; but in a year or two all this turns into a huge mass of green leaves of an even shape and size, smothering up any less strong-growing creeper and destroying all outline of the house itself, its tiny feet sticking so fast to the stone or brick work that, if you try to pull them away, small particles of the wall itself come with them. Besides the temptation of its beautiful early 158 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN growth, one must admit that for ten days the red and bronze and gold of its autumn tints go far to compensate for its many defects during the rest of the year. But this pleasure is easily retained by allowing it to grow over some ugly barn or northern wall, which has no architecture to injure or hide, and where flowering creepers would not flower. No one who has ever been to America and seen Boston can forget the dreary effect of house after house covered from cellar to roof with this luxuriant, overpower- ing ' Vine,' as every Creeper is called in America. The true name of the Ampelopsis is Tricuspidata ; but the Americans call it Japanese Ivy, in memory of where it comes from. If anything could accentuate the ugliness of the general effect, it is the square holes cut for the windows in this evenly green foliage. Everything is worth having in London that will grow there, but, with this picture in my mind, may I urge all who have any influence to make some protest against the fashionable use of this creeper, which seems to prevail from South to North of Great Britain ? Just before I left home I saw with consternation that every delicate brick turret of Hampton Court Palace had been carefully planted with Ampelopsis. For the present it looks harmless enough to all but the prophetic eye of a gardener, but in a few years the sharp lines of the delicate masonry will be entirely veiled by its luxuriant and monotonous growth. Surely fine and historical buildings are very much better left without creepers. In the case of ordinary modern houses with bare walls it is infinitely better to cover them with some of the endless variety of shrubs, creepers, and plants, which can be chosen to flower in succession through the whole year — from the Chimonanthusfragrans, which pushes forth its sweet-scented brown flowers in January, to the bare branches of the Jasminum nudi- florum, whose yellow stars light up a December fog. AUGUST 159