Not so the Japanese (Ipomoea Imperialis). Lured by the seedsman's pictures of this wonder, year after year I waste good money on seed packets of that disappointing flower. My seed germinates after a fashion and sometimes I get a flower or two a trifle larger than those on the native vines, but about the same in color. Three summers ago I potted a seedling and gave it a small trellis. To my great delight it bore a few precious flowers of cerulean hue daintily striped with white. Thus encouraged I still include Japanese Morning Glories in my list of annuals, ordering them from one seedsman after another, if, peradventure, I might hit the man who furnishes the marvels which I have read about—the fluted, fringed, and rainbow-hued, the bona fide Ipomoea Imperialis.
When, fifteen years ago, after a long absence, I went for a summer outing to my native town it was the time of Honeysuckles—the evening air was loaded with their perfume, for there not to have a Honeysuckle is to be poor indeed.
Glad was I to walk in the June moonlight and again revel in the dear familiar odor. When I again left my old home I bore with me three thrifty roots of this lovely vine given me by kind friends. These were carefully planted in a sheltered corner of our Cambridge garden. From that hour I have had Honeysuckles to spare. Grown to big precious vines the three came with us to this garden, where they now cover four wooden trellises, a bit of the garden wall, and an irregular arch at the end of our piazza. Their runners have supplied the entire neighborhood with young vines, twelve of which have already come into bloom, not counting one in Malden and another in Chelsea. Last winter in common with many others I suffered a partial loss of my Honeysuckles from winter-killing. The roots were, however, still intact, and, though we missed their full bloom, their foliage is now (middle of August) as fine as ever.
It is but lately that I have learned that the Honeysuckle and the Woodbine of England are one and the same.
The English Honeysuckle blooms monthly; the Japanese Honeysuckle is not a monthly bloomer. It blossoms with the June roses, and sometimes bears a spray or two of bloom in late autumn. It differs in other ways from the English—has not its pink shading nor its dainty scent. Milton, in Lycidas, calls it "the well-attired Woodbine"—perhaps this is because of its continuous flowering. The oriental variety has in this day superseded the English. More rapid in growth and easier of culture it falls in with the hurrying sentiment of the time. It has been my good fortune to possess in my day three English Honeysuckles—now, mine are all Japanese. The poets, from Chaucer down to Wordsworth, have sung the praises of the Woodbine.
The elder poet drew his image of constant affection from the clinging nature of the Woodbine (or "bind") and its enduring hold on the wedded tree. Contrary to the habit of most other vines the Honeysuckle follows, in its windings, the sun.
The Weigelia, a shrub belonging to the Honeysuckle family, was introduced from China, and is named after Weigel, a German naturalist.
Here end my hints in regard to the selection and culture of such everyday herbaceous plants, shrubs, annuals, and vines as are attainable to the garden-lover of moderate means. Many rarer specimens are (as a matter of course) within reach of one with a longer purse, who holds (with me) that Victor Hugo "hit the nail on the head" when he paradoxically asserted that "the beautiful is as useful as the useful, perhaps more so."
To me one of the beautiful uses of flowers is to cut them for interior decoration.
Our grandmothers had no vocation for out-of-door life. A garden was to them a place to "grow things" in, to work and walk in, but to sit in? never! All the same the big "bowpots" were duly filled, and although less artistically arranged than the vases of today, were a part of the housewife's plan of living, and bore witness to the divine truth that "man cannot live by bread alone."