Vines For Your Garden

A vine of very rapid growth is the cup-and-saucer vine (Coboea scandens), that would climb to a tree-top before frost catches it, if long enough strings might be supplied. Before its rather heavy-looking cups finally turn purplish plum color, they pass through green and lavender transitional phases. The coboea has many-lobed, light-green leaves, lying flat, that introduce a welcome color note in the scale of greens. Seed should be sown at least three inches apart in the hotbed in order that the roots of young vines may not be needlessly disturbed when they are lifted on a trowel and transplanted to the open ground after settled warm weather comes.

Jack's beanstalk probably grew no faster than some of the gourds. All their astonishing growth must be accomplished between the frosts of spring and autumn. For covering unsightly outbuildings, and fences, they accomplish wonders. Every old well used to have a gourd dipper hanging beside it; every housewife in the olden time darned stockings over a gourd. Some of the fruit grows to enormous size . Purple martins nest in these vegetable houses. The people know that where these handsome swallows once take up their abode, the air is rid of innumerable mosquitoes, gnats and other insect pests caught on the wing ,as the birds dart and skim about in an ecstasy of flight.

Garbage cans at the back door, maybe quickly concealed under a canopy of the wild cucumber vine's pretty leaves and feathery greenish white flowers. The Japanese hop skips and jumps up strings too, and its large, handsome leaves, splashed with white, are more decorative than some flowers. But if flowers are wanted, rich-colored gay ones in greatest profusion, everyone plants the tall nasturtium. Rich soil is wasted on it, as it induces the vine to run to leaves.

In cutting nasturtiums to brighten the house -- and they light up north rooms like sunshine -- do not be afraid to cut a quarter of a yard or more of stem. Branches grow again steadily and bloom till after frost if no seed is permitted to form. A mass of the gorgeous flowers alone is color overdone -- too much of a very good thing -- but when nasturtiums are arranged just as they grow with stems, disk-like leaves and seed vessels attached, no flowers brought from the garden into the house are more decorative. They are lasting, too. Draped over stone walls the flower-decked vine shows to splendid advantage.

Let no one forgo growing the perennial butterfly pea because it takes some trouble to start it. Seed should be soaked overnight in warm water to hasten germination before it is planted, three inches apart, in a hotbed. After a good beginning ,the young vines may be given a permanent place in the garden, with a wire netting or lattice to climb up, or well-started vines can be bought from a nursery. They may attain a height of ten feet in rich, moist soil, and if mulched and well watered during hot weather they will be covered with exquisite flowers like so many little butterflies fluttering over them. Although hardy, the roots need some protection in winter. Planted in groups at the back of perennials in the hardy border, the peas look better scrambling over brush, which they may presently conceal, than over wire.

On the shady side of a house, in cool, rich. soil, anyone who knows it will wish to grow the Alleghany vine, fumitory, or mountain fringe (Adlumia), as it is variously called, if not for the sake of the arching sprays of its delicate little pink flowers, like miniature bleeding hearts that have bled themselves almost white, then for its exquisite foliage, as finely cut as maiden-hair fern. It is a biennial, but when once established it sows itself, by climbing swiftly up string or trellis, which it graces with lacy foliage of the tenderest green. But it is in the rock garden, perhaps, that the vine appears at its best. Planted in rich crevices in shaded places it drapes Heck rock with a nice contrast sensitivity and grace.

Of all life, which is the best tasting.