Rose gardening; how to manage roses and enjoy them

Front matter

MARY HAMPDEN

THE JiOME GARDEN BOOKS

Class __Si:l

Preface

A FOOL came running to his King, and cried, ' Sire, sire, rejoice ! A glorious thing has happened in your kingdom.'

But the more the Monarch and the Courtiers, the Ministers of State, the Doctors of Divinity, the Journahsts, the PubHc Crier, questioned him as to the nature of this wonderful event, the less he could remember what it was.

That night, when the King was playing the flute to his Queen, and had persuaded her to listen to the beginning of his latest symphony for the third time (because he always forgot some sharps and flats in the second bar, so had to recommence), the Royal apartment was burst into by the Fool, who carried a red rose.

' Sire, sire, Fve found the miracle ! ' he shouted. ' It only happened at midday. What a wonderful kingdom this must be for such a Rose to open in it ! '

' Out of my presence, you tiresome fool ! You aren't even amusing,' quoth the enraged Ruler. And a page-boy seized the Rose and tore it into fragments.

But a Poet, having seen that flower before even the Fool discovered its rarity, had written a little sonnet about it, in which he had preached a little sermon, all on Love. And that poem touched the heart of a woman so much that she wedded her poorest suitor, who was king of himself, which is far finer than being king of any number of fools and acres. And the young husband taught his wife some of the myriad beautiful truths that the Rose is always whispering to those who have

10 PREFACE

ears neither dulled nor closed on purpose. And the young wife thought of these lovely facts so much that her babies were partly made of them, and had sublime faces, with souls looking through. And one baby became a statesman, who saved his country from revolution ; another was a physician, who studied till he learnt just how to subdue pain ; a third was a priest, who drove wickedness out of all who heard his discourses. That is the end of the ands.

But the King's reign was very peaceful, thanks to the Statesman ; his people were blest in being spared suffering, through the Physician ; while the words of the Priest flowed like a river through the years, gathering to themselves all the beautiful Love that is only waiting to be invited. Nobody knew that the Rose had done all that.

Unless the Fool found out, when he died smiling.

MARY HAMPDEN.

Contents

CHAP.

I Why we should Grow Roses

II Ramblers .

Chapter I Why We Should Grow Roses

' Oh, Rose, of thee I dream, Of all the flowers supreme.'

IT is possible to love the Rose more than the Rose Garden, or the Rose Garden more than the Rose, but the true enthusiast so schools his affections that he learns to be fair to both. To plant so as to merely show off a favourite variety is to miss the rapture of making a perfect dream of a Rose Garden.

Perfect, do I say ? Alas, no ! There are bound to be the three f 's — flecks, flaws and failures. Yet let us thank God that it is so, since zeal can only exist in comfort while there are higher steps to climb, more of the race to run, mistakes to be buried, missed perfection to be pursued. Believe me, rose-growing is the happiest hobby in the world. With music in the drawing-room, books galore in the library or by the bedside, a moderate, but certain, income, health, a rose garden beginning just outside the windows then stretching far into the mysterious beyond — given friends, dear people of some kind, with whom to share blossoms, scenes, rooms, authors and harmony — a man or woman ought to be royally conscious of living in luxury. And at present more people live luxuriously than are aware of it.

The beyond need not be very extensive, the books may be in paper covers, the music drawn only from a sweet, old, rather tired piano, and the roses have to be counted by dozens, instead of hundreds or thousands. It is the love of good things that makes possession of them precious ; and sometimes the folk who have fewest love those most.

It is a hobby that will develop the muscles, or can be indulged in gently and partly by proxy ; it will empty full pockets, yet an obscure, scarcely well-to-do person of either sex has all the facilities for revelhng in it. The labouring man, with hours filched from morning sleep, and spring and summer evenings only, is not debarred from conferring some almost immortal new Rose upon the universe ; which represents, of course, the highest in rose culture.

What colours the garden can wear ! What a scented pleasaunce it can prove ! How gathered roses will overflow the rooms, and go forth to paint exquisite patches, and spread haunting perfumes in divers places ! Then, though the Rose has been so long in cultivation that we cannot trace the identity of the first man who grew it for pleasure, what extraordinary new effects we can create with it, and what a scanty amount we know about it, in spite of all the centuries of study by our scientists.

Perhaps the Rose smiles to herself, out there in the moonlight, over the knowledge of her own mysteriousness ; for we all like to be puzzles to our world.

An old priest, who was a poet in mind, once said to me : ' As often as I remember that the poor are always with us, I reflect, unwittingly, that the same can be said of the Catholic faith, and surely of the rose ? God never wastes His great works.'

An unadvertised social reformer — one of those beings with nice mad ideas — told me he was convinced there would be no wars, strikes, murders, injustices, desertions, robberies, frauds or hypocrisies, if we all worked in rose gardens.'and had our children trained to grow roses before learning to read and write. May there not be something in the notion ?

The rose is the best flower to love rabidly — as we soon shall if we take up the culture — because roses can be had in bloom every month, week, day, probably hour, if not minute, of the year. Special facilities are required for this, yet far

WHY WE SHOULD GROW ROSES less expenditure than is demanded by several other flower hobbies such as orchid, carnation or auricula growing.

Plan for a Rose Garden.

We may begin with garden roses, giving them all aspects, representing all classes, from the Banksians that commence the show to the very latest bloomers. Here is a list of those I have watched competing among themselves each year for the honour of being latest out.

Caroline Testout. Pink. Gruss an Teplitz. Crimson-

Mevrow Dora van Tets. Scarlet. scarlet.

Climbing Mrs. W. J. Grant. Mrs. W. C. Miller. Vermilion,

Deep rose. rose and pink.

Killarney. Pink. Betty. Gold and rose.

La France. Pink. Mrs. Wemyss Quin. Yellow.

Viscountess Folkestone. Florence Haswell Veitch.

Creamy pink. Crimson.

La Tosca. Silver pink. Frau Karl Druschki. White.

Then one can grow pot roses to force, pot roses to bring on slowly, pot roses not hastened at all, pot roses in sun, in shade, in stoves, greenhouses, conservatories, porches and various frames. If there are hundreds of pot roses, and they are cut back in small batches at all sorts of odd seasons, given the necessary artificial temperatures, they will blossom at just as odd times. Pot roses out of doors can be prevented from blooming all at once by being differently located, as well as differently pruned : some should be stood in a shaded stone courtyard, for example, while some of their brethren are starting growth in spring sunshine. Roses, too, can be pruned a number of times, instead of once or twice in the usual pruning months ; the hardier sorts bear this series of checks less well than the Teas, however ; as for Hybrid Teas, their autumnal and early winter vigour after the rough treatment proves a glorious reward to their manager, and, let us hope, reconciles them to the being delayed. Try keeping on cutting back a Madame Abel Chatenay pot specimen, and limiting its shoots, all the summer ; give it its head in October, grow it on under glass, with sunshine, food, water and genial warmth, and see how it will bloom. A famous rose grower, the Reverend J. H. Pemberton, remarked, in an address to the National

WHY WE SHOULD GROW ROSES 19

Rose Society : ' It is possible to have roses in the garden from April to Christmas ' ; his daughter having been able, for several years, to place six vases of roses on the altar of his church on Christmas Day.

I repeat that pot roses, out of doors, can be prevented from blooming all together by being differently situated, as well as differently cut back. Some should be stood on stones or bricks, in a cold shaded court, while their brethren are starting growth in spring, or beginning to blossom in early summer.

Again, roses can be pruned two, three, or four times to retard them, instead of only once, or twice, in March or April. I say, or twice, because it is generally found that some of the once-pruned branches die back, and we mostly have to go over our trees again, each year, and finish the work by another application of knife or secateurs. That the hardiest sorts of roses bear the many prunings needed to retard them less well than do the Teas, and Hybrid Teas, is no doubt because their autumnal vigour is not as great as that of their more delicate relations, which can be trusted to give a glorious late yield even when pruned in April.

Rose culture can be pursued as part of what a philosopher has called ' the supreme sanity of creation.' From babyhood Man is happiest when * making something,' and either a rose garden, or a new rose, is undoubtedly no mean contribution to the world that God set growing. Some comfort is required by every creature. While one person may seek it in rare food, drink, sport, or costly raiment, the collection of snuffboxes, blue and white china, stamps, door-knockers, silhouettes, the entertaining of celebrities, throw of the dice, dealing of cards, millions of men and women prefer to take it in the sight of growing Beauty. Fair surroundings, in one form or another, are essential to refined souls. The best, ethically, are able, I admit, to keep ever within sight such fair purposes and ideals, that they can dispense with gardens. But the ordinary mortal frets without loveliness often before him. The benevolence of the Divinity is naturally seen more readily through a rose, than through a worm on the path, or the dust and mud of the street.

For a pageant of colour there is nothing hke rose time. The hues, hke the scents, heal our nerves, improve us morally, infuse new talent into us, compensate us for our past winters of disappointment. There is delicate beauty about our lilacs, hawthorns and laburnums, under skies of spring turquoise, but the richer blend of summer's ultramarine with the crimson, scarlet, copper, orange and gold of the roses, offers a more strengthening, revivifying tonic. One, too, that remains ours till winter calls on us to become fireside folk again.

Suppose a man enters upon a new tenancy, or buys a freehold, in May or June. He can make his grounds charming at once by buying pot roses and sinking them in very rich soil, after breaking away just the bottoms of the pots. In November he will find that the roots have gone deep ; then the sides of the pots should be broken away, and, hey presto ! the roses are discovered to be as finally planted as though introduced to the garden in the customary manner.

Rose gardens may be as formal as any carpet-bedding design ; indeed, a fine plan can often be worked out from one of the bedding patterns of yore.

Or rose gardens can have no shape, be as wild as hedgerows and copses on neglected land.

Loyalty may be evidenced by one's rosery. There are the Scotch roses for the sons and daughters of the kingdom of the thistle. Pre-eminent is the King of Scotland, a purplered, streaked with white outside, or often with all the reverse of its petals pinky-white, but too generally sent out as York and Lancaster. The true type of the latter, for Saxons, is half-red, half-white, flatfish of blossom, with pale green leaves coated with a fine down, and the twiggiest, thorniest of stems. Then, in the Loyalty rosery, roses that have been specially loved by, and named after royal, or sanctified, personages should be included.

French sympathies, or ancestry, can be shown by blending

WHY WE SHOULD GROW ROSES 2i

the French roses, Rosa galHca varieties, or cultivating exclusively the thousands of roses raised by Frenchmen.

The antiquarian ought to make a garden to show how the rose came to be as at present ; which would form a memorial to the gifted gardeners who, during the centuries, have bred and improved the race of the rose for us. The roses should be labelled and placed according to dates ; Gloire de Dijon, Madame Falcot, Jules Margottin and General Jacqueminot were introduced in '53 ; '58 saw the debut of Celine Forestier, welcomed, but feared as very dehcate. These, and plenty more olden sorts, are obtainable now ; but happy is the fancier who can discover the pink Hebe's Cup, the rosy-Hlac, white striped Duke of Devonshire, or a real Beauty of Billiard, ' middle-sized, of compact form, colour like a burning coal, actually shining as though on fire.'

We may read of, and long for, a ' River's George the Fourth, English flower, very dark and velvety, raised from seed ' ; for the Old Double Yellow ; for Mossy de Meaux, that throve best on arid soil ; for Rose A Odeur de Dragees, whose almond fragrance filled our great-parents' bowers, a pale flesh flower ; for the hght salmon Queen of Perpetuals ; the red and flesh striped, double-cupped Striped Perpetual or Panache de Giraudon ; for Purpurea grandiflora, a large blooming double well-cupped noisette ; for the Oleander-flowered Bourbon ; for the original tea rose, single, named The Simple, but dowered with a wondrous perfume ; for Bouquet Blanc, the white Cabbage ; for the big, cream, double, evergreen Triomphe de Bollwyller ; or for the scarlet Eglantine rose called La Belle Distinguee.

But enough ! I shall but be making the mouths of rose enthusiasts water uncomfortably.

An old author states : ' Those who are fond of tracing Celtic etymologies derive the word Rose from the Celtic Rhodd or Rhudd, red, whence it is alleged comes the Latin rosa.' Possibly this is as wise and probable a surmise as to trace the origin of King David's harp to Wales, or to suppose the old Roman toga and cornamusa originated the plaid and bagpipes of the modern Caledonian. But Celts are at full liberty to cherish the theory. As all flowers began as white, or cream, so it is said, the first rose to receive a name was not likely to be called red ; however, the title may have been conferred at a later period of history. We do know for certain that the garden rose has been cultivated from time immemorial, and double roses are mentioned in chronicles of above two thousand years ago by Herodotus, Theophrastus and Athenaeus ; while Pliny enumerates several sorts besides the well-known Cabbage rose {Rosa centifolia) :

' The floweret of a hundred leaves, Expanding while the dew-fall flows And every leaf its balm receives.'

Whether we elect to manifest the glories of the Rose of the past or the present, rose-growing will be a delight to ourselves, our neighbours, and our friends.

Small space is no veto ; 100,000 roses viewed en masse do not identify themselves with us as do ten cultivated by our living-room windows ; the latter will be our pets, our familiar consolers, our floral children ; the former will be merely a breadth of colour, a noble landscape feature, a legitimate show-off.

Roses are less trouble, and cost less, than either beddingplants or herbaceous ones ; they are especially to be recommended for front and back gardens to ladies who, being not strong enough to do much manual labour, and without much spending-money, will be able to prune, feed, dis-bud, and occasionally water these trees during droughts. If the hoe is kept busy upon the surface of beds and borders, and insects are prevented from spoiling the blooms and foliage, their roses will flourish. Whereas, if bedding-subjects had to be renewed for spring and summer, or overgrown perennials lifted and divided, either the cost of floral ornaments would be considerable, or the services of a man and a spade would become necessary.

The sad and lonely should grow roses, for there is solace in

WHY WE SHOULD GROW ROSES 23

giving away big baskets of the produce to other poor lonely and sad folk who are without such flowers. The gay should grow roses as a symbol of their gladness, or maybe, to have their too exuberant mirthfulness a trifle sobered by the anxieties inseparable from any pursuit. For the greatest happiness is not noisy and thoughtless — but deeply quiet.

The hobby is for the child, the adult, and the aged. The last will probably gain from it the fullest serenity, through knowing that it is well for the best splendours of earth to be fleeting, since that sets us at liberty to hope most from glories soon to come.

If we are unable to have roses in glasshouses, let us console ourselves by the reflection that no rose, grown under exotic conditions, has ever the robust comeliness of its sister of the open air.

If we possess much land, let us write up, in some arbour, these lines of the Abbe de Lille :

' To me the garden a vast picture seems ; Be painter then. The ample fields around ; Their varying shades unnumbered that display The vivid rays of light, or mass of gloom ; The hours, and seasons, and revolving still The circle of the year and circle of the day ; The meads in variegated beauty bright ; The ever-cheering verdure of the hills ; The streams ; the rocks ; the rivers ; and the flowers, Thy pencils these, thy canvas, and thy tints.'

But if we own, or rent, but a few rods, let us paint a perfect rose miniature, and cease to long for a huge canvas, realizing that it is as good a work to encircle a little homestead exquisitely as to colour a solitude.

Roses always seem to me to be eager to make our gardens beautiful. Plant them, then, tend them lovingly, and reap the harvest gratefully.

Chapter II Ramblers

' A white rose, delicate On a tall bow and straight ; Early comer, early comer, Never waiting for the summer.

' For "If I wait," said she, " Till times for roses be — For the musk-rose and the moss-rose — What glory then for me In such a company ? — Roses plenty, roses plenty.

And one nightingale for twenty ?

' For I would lonely stand.

Uplifting my white hand- On a mission, on a mission.

To declare the coming vision." '

E. Barrett Browning.

IT has been said that all climbing roses are Ramblers, because they all ramble, and do not actually climb. But I think this a foolish suggestion. It is true that roses will not cling to walls or trellises, as do the self-clinging Virginian creeper and some sorts of ivy, but neither will clematises, wistarias, or a host of the ' climbers ' we value. Plant a Crimson Rambler, a climbing Hybrid Perpetual, Hybrid Tea, or Noisette, by a house wall, and it will be up to the bedroom window, or on to the roof, in due time, whether nailed or tied up, or not. After a period of very untidy, sprawling, neglected-looking over-luxuriance, the stem will thicken, like a tree trunk, to

RAMBLERS support the branches high in air. Nail up one of these roses and it will mount amazingly fast.

When we talk of ' Ramblers ' we certainly give quite a loose, disjointed sort of classification ; but we generally mean the most rapid-growing roses that possess small flowers in bunches, or on long sprays, amid a profusion of leaves. Flower shows have familiarized us with many charming kinds ; if we amateurs fail to recognize their differences as to habit, requirements, and hereditary influences, we are scarcely to blame, since not only is the subject naturally complex, but raisers, and other scientific rosarians, complicate it by using various styles of nomenclature.

There is no need, for instance, for a Crimson Rambler to be listed as a Climbing Polyantha in one catalogue, and described as a Multiflora in another. The unlearned should be catered for in these matters. Again, one journalistic article will allude to Ramblers as though they were all of identical ancestry ; another will mention none but Wichuraianas. Now, it has been stated that it is most important for the cultivator to recognize which Ramblers are Wichuraianas, and which are not, because the pruning should not be similar. The methods are fully detailed in Chapter XXI ; I merely mention the case here as an illustration of the pitfalls into which scientists unnecessarily warn amateurs not to tumble.

Apart from pruning for exhibi- A

tion, I have proved that the Multifloras (or Climbing Polyan- rustic Wood Pillar for thas) will thrive if pruned as Rambler Roses.

though they were Wichuraianas, and give a glorious garden show,

I had a rampant hedge of Dorothy Perkins, the best-known chmbing Hybrid Wichuraiana, that I wished to grow extra thick and high ; so I set to work to prove, at least to my own satisfaction, that this class of rose can equally well be treated as though it were only a Polyantha. I did not cut away the old wood, and grow on none but new shoots, but let young branches spring out of old stems, as they would. The result was a quicker, denser, broader, higher hedge in two years than could have been gained in six by the ' right ' method. Dogmatism is such a pity when it frightens people off rose-growing. Another experiment I tried was with a Euphrosyne, which is a Climbing Polyantha of the Crimson Rambler order. Instead of cutting it down almost to the ground, after planting it against a west wall in autumn, I let it become a tree in which the birds of the air could make their nests — and did. The result was that it covered the whole front of a stable in a couple of years, from ground to chimneys.

No. Amateurs need not fear to buy and plant Ramblers. If they do not cultivate them in the best way of all, there are plenty of other ways, to which these accommodating trees take most kindly. These, like most other roses, can be cut, fed and located variously, according to the divers effects they are required to produce, or the exigencies of circumstances ; it is by dealing differently with trees of the same variety that the gardener learns the merits and disadvantages of rules, gains a respect for the robust wills of the roses themselves, and adds fresh interest annually to his hobby.

Do we wish all roses to continue blooming all the rose season ? That question has been vigorously debated by rosarians. No one can settle it, because all persons do not think alike (thank Providence), and we cannot put it before the country, by a General Election, to see which way the vote goes.

Rotation of beauties is part of a garden's charm. We do not want to keep daffodils till November, or start sunflowers

RAMBLERS in May. Let the Ramblers follow the Banksians, have their day, and be followed by the later roses.

How impossible it is to prophesy which will be the first ' real ' roses out in a garden ! Ramblers are not actually the earliest. Usually it is a Gloire de Dijon that bursts forth just after the tiny Banksians, but sometimes a different warm wall climber, possibly a Mrs. W. J. Grant, or Madame Alfred Carriere, will give the lead.

Climbing Wichuraianas, of which the white single-type flower is sadly neglected, go on flowering much longer than Crimson Rambler and Co. Yet there is no other rose that has quite the colour of C.R. or gives such a show of it, or that embowers the place with such prodigality of charm. Do not talk to me of Flower of Fairfield — which was brought out as a perpetual Crimson Rambler^ — not as the latter's rival, at all events ; it has its value, but grow it beside the beloved C.R., and note the points it lacks. It has but yellowishgreen foliage, not healthy pale emerald ; it is paler of crimson, as though more water had been mixed with the paint ; its blossom is rather papery ; it fades soon to a dull tint ; and, ten to one, it doeswo^ go on lavishly blooming, but at the best, takes a long rest, then may bud forth again, feebly. Grow it, by all means, in case it beautifies autumn ; but never say it is an improvement on dear C.R. Besides, the true C.R. blooms quite late enough.

Shall I attempt to define the chief deliciousness of the Rambler roses ? Surely it is their buds, minute, half-deve-

Iron Support for Climbing Rose.

loped, coming open, just unfurled ? Is not a bouquet of only these, in all stages, one of the loveliest things in creation ? For the little individual, semi-double, or double roses, of which the great trusses are formed, are perfect in make and spring from perfect sheaths ; the roses have simply chosen to be miniatures, as though destined for Fairyland.

Yes, we must have the Ramblers, and the more representatives we can admit into our grounds, the happier for us.

As pillars they take up a deal of space, for they must go high, even though the branches can be wound round and round a frame of poles, and this frame, made square or circular, can have a width of a yard or more. Indeed, there are countless methods that may be tried for supporting Ramblers. They often need fastening up owing to the lavish weight of blossom trusses. I was once amused to find a gardener who kept haymaker's forks for this ; but the prongs, invisible under the garlands, certainly held the branches aloft famously. The handles were sharpened so that they were easy to drive into the ground.

What an admirable hedge Ramblers afford, supported by stout stakes in a double line, as green-pea sticks are set ! Or they will cover real pea, or bean faggots, if those are more at command, and by the time the faggots have dried and become brittle the roses will have wound into a hedge-mass of boughs, and grown so strong that no more propping up will be necessary. It is an excellent plan to arch many of the long shoots right over, like a succession of hoops, and peg them down on the other side of the hedge, proceeding thus with the shoots on that other side also, besides stretching out numbers of branches horizontally, low down, say six inches only above the soil.

A hedge against a fence is, of course, easiest to form. Ramblers are useful, grown thus, to increase the height of boundary fences. Ramblers will not thrive on hot walls. It would be silly to warn readers specifically that they will not flourish on south, or south-west walls, because circumstances alter cases. I have known them adorn a south house-front magni-

RAMBLERS 29

ficently, where tall trees, on a grass plot, shut off the sunshine from them. They will do well with an east wall background, better still with a west one, yet they never relish walls ; the materials bother them, I believe, be those brick, stucco, plaster or stone. Give them wood, trellises for choice, as they are air lovers.

They can be grown as bushes, weeping standards, on rustic screens, espaliers, along pergolas, up flag-staffs or other poles, on stately painted iron pillars, united by slung ropes or wires ; or they can be put on the tops of high mounds, or banks level with wall summits, and allowed to trail downwards. The effect will be best if turf is beneath them, or they can dip their tips in stream, lake or pool.

Glades, like the nut walks and bowered alleys of Elizabethan gardens, can be made with Ramblers. To achieve this, plant Ramblers each side of a path and give only such supports as must be, to within a sixth part of the height required, then bend and arch the shoots over gracefully, cross them with their opposite neighbours, and bind them together. For supports, have natural wood, ash boughs, willow rods, birch poles — slender, to sway a little in the winds, neither rigid nor clumsy. Feed the trees generously, as soon as they are established, to encourage a copse-like growth of shoots from the base. As the alley grows up, the boughs can be woven in and out for a close roofing.