SWEET VERBENA.
These notes can only touch upon the more careful use of a few of the many climbing plants and trailing shrubs. One of the many garden possessions that I ardently desire and can never have is a bit of rocky hillside; a place partly of sheer scarp and partly of tumbled and outcropping rock-mass, for the best use of these plants. There would be the place for the yellow winter Jasmine, for the Honeysuckles both bushy and rambling, for the trailing Clematises lately described, and for the native C. Vitalba, beautiful both in flower and fruit; for shrubs like Forsythia suspensa and Desmodium penduliflorum that like to root high and then throw down cascades of bloom, and for the wichuraiana Roses, also for Gourds and wild Vines. There should be a good quarter of a mile of it so that one might plant at perfect ease, one thing at a time or one or two in combination, in just such sized and shaped groups as would make the most delightful pictures, and in just the association that would show the best assortment.
I have seen long stretches of bare chalky banks for year after year with nothing done to dispel their bald monotony, feeling inward regret at the wasted opportunity; thinking how beautiful they might be made with a planting of two common things, Clematis Vitalba and Red Spur Valerian. But such examples are without end.
CHAPTER XIII
GROUPINGS OF PLANTS IN POTS
It is a common thing in Italian gardens to see a quantity of plants in pots standing in various parts of the garden, generally in connexion with paved terraces and steps. This is in addition to the larger pot plants—Oranges, Lemons, Oleanders, &c., that, in their immense and often richly decorated earthenware receptacles, form an important part of the garden design. In our climate we cannot have these unless there is an Orangery or some such spacious place free from frost for housing them in winter. But good groupings of smaller plants in pots is a form of ornament that might be made more use of in our own gardens, especially where there are paved spaces near a house or in connexion with a tank or fountain, so that there is convenient access to means of daily watering. I have such a space in a cool court nearly square in shape. A middle circle is paved, and all next the house is paved, on a level of one shallow step higher. It is on the sides of this raised step that the pot plants are grouped, leaving the middle space free where there is a wooden seat, and good access to a door to the left.
POT PLANTS JUST PLACED.
