In the Garden Fifteen or more years ago I planted
a Royal Muscadene vine when about four feet high. It now extends for sixteen yards, and has had to be supported overhead by a colonnade of white brick pillars connected to the house by fifteen white-painted iron rods, each seven feet long. Every year this vine produces from 150 to 300 bunches of small sweet grapes (if there is a little October sunshine), it is impervious to frost and immune to disease, I never feed nor water it (its roots must by now be well on the way to Australia), its prunings grow simply by being pushed into a bit of waste ground, and it forms a wide canopy of shade on the hottest of dog-days. No plant can compare with the vine in the fusion of beauty and use nor in the depth of its associations and symbolism. Why then does not every gardener, large or small, grow an open-air vine? H. J. MASSINGHAM.
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