Manual of Gardening

CLIMBING PLANTS

Vines do not differ particularly in their culture from other herbs and
shrubs, except as they require that supports be provided; and, as they
overtop other plants, they demand little room on the ground, and they
may therefore be grown in narrow or unused spaces along fences
and walls.

In respect to the modes of climbing, vines may be thrown into three
groups,--those that twine about the support; those that climb by means
of special organs, as tendrils, roots, leaf stalks; those that neither

twine nor have special organs but that scramble over the support, as the
climbing roses and the brambles. One must recognize the mode of climbing
before undertaking the cultivation of any vine.

Vines may also be grouped into annuals, both tender (as morning-glory)
and hardy (as sweet pea); biennials, as adlumia, which are treated
practically as annuals, being sown each year for bloom the next year;
herbaceous perennials, the tops dying each fall down to a persisting
root, as cinnamon vine and madeira vine; woody perennials (shrubs), the
tops remaining alive, as Virginia creeper, grape, and wistaria.

There is scarcely a garden in which climbing plants may not be used to
advantage. Sometimes it may be to conceal obtrusive objects, again to
relieve the monotony of rigid lines. They may also be used to run over
the ground and to conceal its nakedness where other plants could not
succeed. The shrubby kinds are often useful about the borders of clumps
of trees and shrubbery, to slope the foliage down to the grass, and to
soften or erase lines in the landscape.

In the South and in California, great use is made of vines, not only on

Next Page