THE 



GARDENER 



NOVEMBER 1870. 



AMATEUR ROSE -GROWING. 



NE is really led to ask, What becomes of the tens of 

 thousands of budded and grafted Roses that are an- 

 nually sent out from our nurseries 1 Are we to assume 

 that they go on from year to year constituting posi- 

 tive additions to our existing Rose-gardens 1 Or are we, on the 

 other hand, to acknowledge that these large numbers chiefly serve 

 the purpose of maintaining, in a slightly extended form, our pre- 

 sent Rose-plantations, by filling up the ranks of those that have been 

 decimated by disease, starvation, and death? Is it not a certain 

 fact that the culture and growth of Roses either in the form of 

 standards budded on the Brier, or as dwarfs on the Manetti stock, 

 is decidedly unpopular amongst the great mass of amateur growers, 

 and also amongst a few of the professional gardeners, as they find 

 the Rose, when grown under these artificial conditions, to be 

 amongst all our hardy plants the most sickly, and liable to speedy 

 exhaustion 1 There are reasons for this tendency to decay, of course, 

 and it is worth while trying to discover them, although, perhaps, there 

 are not a dozen readers of the 'Gardener' to whose minds these same 

 thoughts have not already presented themselves, and who have felt 

 all the miseries attendant upon Rose-cultivation if they have limited 

 their operations exclusively to budded or grafted plants. My earliest 

 recollections of budded Roses date back for many years, and all 

 through that long period the propagation of them has been going on 

 literally by millions ; and yet, could we but take a census of our stock 

 of living Roses and compare it with what has been worked during the 

 last twenty years, should we not exclaim, " How can this thing be 1 " 



2 K 



