This section is from the book "What England Can Teach Us About Gardening", by Wilhelm Miller. Also available from Amazon: What England Can Teach Us About Gardening.
The most precious evergreen climber in the world is the ivy, because it has been loved longest by the human race. Therefore we ought to grow it wherever we can, but only on stone and brick buildings. The English sometimes make the mistake of sending ivy up tall trees. Why hide a characteristic beauty, like the trunk of a beech? Even when a tree is about to die this is a bad practice, for the close-climbing ivy and ampelopsis outline and emphasize death, while the loose Virginia creeper transmutes and glorifies it. Ivy will climb to the top of a tall castle in England, but in the latitude of New York it attains only ten feet or so.
The best evergreen climber for the North is the climbing euonymus (especially the round-leaved form, variety vegetus), and we ought to plant it by the million. Eventually its leaf ma^ be as dear to us as ivy is to Europe. For the euonymus is hardiei than English ivy and has the immense advantage of red berries that glow all winter. It is a Japanese plant which I predict will become thoroughly Americanized.
 
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