The Hop is a graceful, hardy, and quick-growing climber, and there is a variegated kind that some people prefer. A Hop will cover a big arch in one year. Also, if you are not on the spot to attend to it, it will throttle every other plant near, and it will probably acquire several varieties of insect blight, and hand them on to its neighbours. One of the authors has suffered from sharing a garden with a Hop enthusiast, and she well remembers the struggle she had to rescue her Roses, Hollyhocks, and Delphiniums from the Hop’s embraces and from the green fly it encouraged. It came up year after year, too, and would not be killed.
The Everlasting Peas are most useful climbers in town gardens. They have no scent, but they give you colour, and are extremely hardy. Then, there are many annual climbers, some of which we have told you about already. If you get Convolvulus Major do not be in a hurry to sow your seeds. The seedlings are delicate, and do not seem to recover well if touched by a spring frost. The first week in May is soon enough. We have seen their blue trumpets grown with a Gloire de Dijon, and their pink ones opening all over an old Lavender bush. Another combination we remember in the same garden was a yellow Banksia Rose and a pink monthly one climbing together up an old grey stone wall. The climbing La France, too, loves a wall, and will flower in masses against one.
But we might go on for ever about the fascinations of creepers and crawlers. The real difficulty is invariably that of choice. You never have room for all you want to grow.
So you must decide for yourself what you will grow; but we advise you strongly to buy your climbers from a first-rate grower. They only cost 1s. or 1s. 6d. each; you cannot have room for many, and they last for years. The cheap stuff advertised is usually most disappointing. We once planted two of the Ampelopsis Veitchii against the same wall, one from the great Veitch himself, and one from a little man round the corner. The difference was in colour rather than in growth. Both lived, climbed, and covered the house, but it was the Veitch plant that turned glowing red and yellow. The other remained brownish-green. It was the same with a Ceanothus. The one from a good firm covered a side of the house with soft yet vivid blue in spring. A cheap one flowered, but its flowers were wishy-washy, a vexation rather than a pleasure.
Before you plant a creeper turn over the soil well, and if it is poor have some good manure forked in. We should never dream of planting a climbing Rose without digging a large hole and putting in a quantity of manure for its roots to feed on, not immediately, but later on. There should be soil on the top of the manure, and in that your Rose should be planted, as we have told you, firmly, yet not too deeply, and with outspread roots. The main stem of your creeper should be as near its support as possible, and tied to nails, wires, or trellis, with bast or twine; but be careful not to bind it tightly, or when it grows it will be cut through. Many gardeners use little strips of cloth and nails, but the cloth shelters insects.
CHAPTER XIII
FRUIT AND VEGETABLES
To this hour one of the authors of this book prefers unripe Greengages to ripe ones, because they remind her of those that grew against the wall of her own garden when she was a child, and which she always ate long before they were ripe. In her days children did imprudent things of this kind, but no doubt you modern children know too much about the laws of hygiene to run such risks—at least, we hope so, or we might be blamed for letting you know that anyone could eat unripe fruit and survive. We are not going to tell you much about fruit and vegetables, because a child is not likely to want his little garden to be a kitchen garden. In case you are a town child, and have never seen vegetables growing, we may as well tell you that they take a great deal of room. We know a boy in Germany who went to live in a ground-floor flat that had a tiny garden belonging to it, the kind of garden in which you can have three rose-bushes and a border of pinks. He was so fond of gardening that after school on a winter day he would amuse himself with a trowel shovelling the bare soil up and down; but he knew so little about it that he wrote to his aunt in England, saying he wished to grow Potatoes, Parsley, Mint, Honeysuckle, Runner Beans, and Vegetable Marrows. The aunt had to explain as well as she could by letter that in a garden of that size he could only grow about two Potatoes, and that he had better try a few Tulips and Daffodils instead. But when spring came she sent him some Vegetable Marrow seeds, and they were the source of a great and joyful excitement later in the year. The boy was away in the country most of the early summer, and when he got back to his little garden in August he found a huge ripe Marrow and smaller ones coming on. We can’t advise you to grow Vegetable Marrows, however, as they take a great deal of room, and require a mound or ridge. If you have a warm brick wall you should have a Peach, a Pear, a Golden Plum, a Greengage, or a White Heart Cherry. If you have a spare corner, plant a Gooseberry or a Currant bush. In your border try to grow a few Lettuces and Radishes, and some Mustard and Cress for the schoolroom tea.