To show off vining and trailing plants to best advantage, place them where the softening effects of their natural growth habits will look appropriate. Younger, smaller specimens take to tables, window ledges, shelves,and plant boxes where they can spill gracefully over the edge and follow their normal inclinations. Older, larger plants, if too big for such placement, can be trained on a variety of supports, such as moss sticks or trellises, where they can send growth upward.

In addition to placement where they show off as individuals, the large, vining plants can serve as handsome background greenery for a massed indoor planting of the sort that is pictured in the first chapter. They can, indeed, play a major role in such an arrangement, for most of the other foliage plants will be low, bushy, and in need of tall contrast for a dramatic effect.

Even the most inexperienced of indoor gardeners are familiar with English ivy and the common or heartleaf philodendron as examples of vining plants.But even ‘old hands’ may be unaware of the tremendous variety available and the unusual effects that can be gained from some of the less-familiar members of the vining tribe.

A large number of the vining plants,which you may know only from seeing them grow freely in a native tropical or subtropical climate,are easily adaptable to pot culture. Bougainvillea, star jasmine, passion-flower, hoya, and stephanotis are but a few of the many vining plants that can be grown as house plants and that -in season-favor you with colorful or fragrant bloom, as well as perennially pleasing foliage. You’ll need to provide all of these plants with higher humidity (50 percent) during the cold, winter months. When summer comes, a shady, out door location will keep them healthy until cold weather makes its appearance.

• Waxy blooms of stephanotis are prized for fragrance, they are used in bridal bouquets. Grow outdoors in summer; bring indoors before frost and water less often so the plant goes semidormant. Grow in bright light.

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