Rose

Growing Roses

The common idea that roses can only be grown in heavy clay soil, if carried out would exclude them from a large area of England where light, sandy, and calcareous soils prevail. If we can get roses on their own roots we can grown them well in such soils—in some cases better.

The trade practice of grafting all roses from various climates on the native Dog Rose is a source of infinite trouble to rose growers. Some do well on the stock, though in the end suckers will prevail, some kinds flower badly, and some die. For years I have grown many hundreds of roses in my flower garden and also in open plots, and found that quite half the Tea and China Roses did badly, or perished, if worked on the Brier, the most vigorous of wild Roses.

The old summer-flowering roses of European origin did well on the Brier; the trouble arose from attempting to put the roses of Chinese origin on our native stock. I had at first no choice but to use the plants sold to me by the trade, and so I lost years in trying to overcome the difficulty. The suckers were so strong and fierce in my plots that in getting among them I had to wear very long leather leggings. Getting rid of suckers is laborious and tedious work.

Where the popular idea is that roses do best on clay, let people who entertain it so enjoy them, but let those who have soils of a different nature not despair, though they must make their beds deep in the soil in which roses are supposed to grow best. In districts with such soils—that is, light, sandy, or calcareous—the best way is to insert medium-sized cuttings of the half-ripened wood in September, if possible where they are to grow. The chief difficulty in working plants on their own roots is that the root is more fragile than the Dog Rose root. One rose put against a wall many years ago in my garden is still in perfect growth, which, I am quite sure, would, if grafted on the Brier, have gone the way of all roses.

Types of Roses

The attempted classification of roses into Teas, hybrid perpetuals, etc., is confusing and not sound, as all these roses are hybrids. What is wanted in the trade and other catalogs is alphabetical lists of the best varieties, without following the absurd attempt at classification. It would be difficult to imagine anything more confusing than the writings on the rose and our catalogs of the present day! Almost useless groups, like the Boursault, are dignified as classes, while more important groups like the noble Teas often receive no due notice; the confusion arising from the misleading term "hybrid perpetual" has effectually concealed the fact that the true perpetual bloomers are the Tea Roses, so keeping the noblest of all Roses out of gardens even in the southern counties.

For many years Roses far superior to the many so-called "perpetual" in point of continuity of bloom have been raised, and yet, as a result of that ill-chosen name, one may go into some of the largest gardens and hardly see a rose in the rose garden in August. The set idea of the Rose garden itself, as laid down in all the books, i.e., a place apart where one can only see flowers at a certain season, was harmful, as it led to the absence of the rose from the flower garden.

Instead of seeing the rose in many different attitudes in a country place, we see a wretched mob of standards and half-standards rising out of the ground, generally in a miserable formal arrangement called the Rosery. The rose exhibitors rose garden is even uglier than the so-called Rosery in the large country seat, and thus the beautiful human and artistic side of the rose garden has been forgotten.

Tea Roses

Tea Roses are in many ways so superior to all other roses that we might place them first, yet there is room for a great extension of their culture in gardens, both large and small. We find even standard works on rose growing speaking of the Teas as tender and needing protection. Others say that only in a few instances can they be grown in the open ground; and to have them in full beauty, to ensure a constant succession of flowers and to produce them in all their loveliness and purity of color, they must be grown under glass. This is not so.

Tea Roses may be grown in many gardens where they cannot now be found, and all who love roses should try them. The variety of lovely colors amongst Tea Roses, the odor, the long season over which a profuse bloom is borne, and their charming foliage are great merits. Let us for ever give up the stupid notion of growing our Roses only in a Rosery, in some out-of-the-way spot. The grand Tea Roses now under notice are worthy of the best position in the garden. None, with me, have ever been protected, but winter winds blow furiously over the garden, and on several occasions more than 20 degrees of frost have been registered among the plants.

They may be grown with every prospect of success over quite the southern half of England and in many other favored spots. As it is extremely difficult to buy strong plants of Tea Roses on their own roots, the trials were necessarily made with good plants grafted on the Dog Rose, but all my experience tends to show that with many of the best kinds I should have been more successful with plants raised from cuttings struck in the open air in autumn. A great point is to put the cuttings in where we wish the plants to grow. Another is not to let the little plants flower-they try to do so very early, and this must be prevented by constant pinching.

I feel certain now that many of the kinds I have lost, or that bloomed feebly and died out, were the result of grafting, or arose from the stock itself and conflict of the saps of plants of quite different countries and natures. To be quite fair to all these beautiful roses, they should be tried in both ways, and not for one year only.