340 THE FLOEAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



As at this season many amateurs are buying and planting roses, 

 a few suggestions may not be out of place. Brier roses, or in other 

 words standards, require a good deep moist loam, well manured and 

 industriously broken up previous to planting. A good clay will suit 

 them if there is no stint of labour in deep digging and breaking up, 

 and manure it as you would for cauliflowers. Dwarfs, whether on 

 own roots or Manettis, require a rather light rich loam, but robust 

 habited roses, such as Jules Margottin, General Jacqueminot, and 

 Anna Alexieff, are not particular, provided they can root deep and 

 are well fed, Nevertheless, the best way to prepare the ground, if 

 it is a rather stiff loam, is to dress the front line where the dwarfs 

 are to be planted with plenty of leaf-mould and rotten manure; 

 and if rotted turf can be spared for it, the stuff \\ ill not be wasted. 

 But let no one suppose that roses require elaborate preparations ; 

 any soil that will grow a good cabbage will grow a good rose, whether 

 it is a cabbage rose or any other kind. In my rosery the General 

 and Jules, and others of like habit, on their own roots, make shoots 

 seven to nine feet long in one season. It happens to be a very 

 fertile soil, is manured on the surface every spring, and every third 

 year all the roses are lifted, and the ground deeply dug and manured. 

 As to buying roses, an order sent to any of the first-class trade 

 growers, whose names are known well enough, specifying heights and 

 numbers, and leaving the dealer to select the sorts, will be sure to 

 result satisfactory, and the cost of the whole would be about half 

 what would be charged if the sorts and the trees were selected by 

 the purchaser. I made a plantation like my own for a friend last 

 winter, and I went about it in a most off-hand way. I wrote to 

 Messrs. Paul and Son for so many hundred standards, ranging from 

 three to seven feet ; and I said nothing about the numbers required 

 of particular heights or sorts. When they came in, I set the men 

 to work in a systematic way. One pruned head and tail, and handed 

 them over ; the next placed them in lots as to heights ; the next 

 carried them to their places, and laid them in bundles for planting. 

 To have a plantation of roses as true to heights as an architect 

 would require the columns of a portico, is out of the question — it 

 simply cannot be done ; but there is no difficulty in arranging them 

 to form a very regular bank, if a fair proportion of each height is 

 supplied in the first instance. 



The planting of roses, more especially of standards, should be 

 done with care. Eellows who blunder about, and hack and slash 

 with spade and knife, ought not to be admitted amongst roses. All 

 the long roots must be cut back ; all the wounded roots must be 

 shortened so as to remove the injured parts ; there must be no 

 tugging and tearing, and care must be taken not to bruise the bark. 

 In cutting back the heads, it must be remembered that the final 

 pruning is to be done after they are replanted ; the cutting back 

 before planting is to render them more convenient for handling, for 

 the nurserymen send them in with all their huge whip-like shoots 

 full length ; it would not do for them to prune ; they would not look 

 worth their money, to say nothing of the time it would consume. 

 The first proceeding consists in measuring oft' the ground in lines, 



