ON THE CULTURE OF TALL OR CLIMBL^G ROSES. 



369 



climbers or twiners will live and flower 

 among- the spray of evergreen trees ; and 

 further, to show that this is not a new com- 

 bination, I need only quote the couplet, 



" Not a pine in my trrove is there seen 

 But a woodbine entwines it around." 



Cottam and Hallen's cast-iron rose-stake 

 may be regarded as perhaps the most orna- 

 mental and economical dead prop in use. 

 This elegant stake I quote here, that I may 

 compare its cost with the price of those I 

 am about to introduce, and likewise that 

 we may continue its services to prop the 

 tiny growing roses worked upon other rose- 

 stems, in order to bring them near the eye, 

 so that ladies may closely examine the rose 

 without stooping, and without being tempt- 

 ed to pluck it ; for of all the casualties to be 

 guarded against, that of not leaving the 

 rose upon its stem until the flower has fa- 

 ded is the most important. The price of 

 this stake, six feet long, and strong in pro- 

 portion to its length, is said to be Is. GJd. 

 (Encyclopaedia of Gardening.) The square 

 heavy heart-of-oak stake, if sufficiently 

 strong to be durable, and well painted, will 

 cost little less than the iron one above quo- 

 ted. The drawbacks to dead props are, 

 first, the necessity for continual painting, 

 then rust in the iron under ground, and rot 

 in wood at the surface of the ground, the 

 too slender form of the iron stake, and the 

 unnatural square form of the wooden one, 

 so much at variance with the nicely-ba- 

 lanced and symmetrical proportions of live 

 timber, whose wooden trunks are never 

 square like our wooden rose-prop, neither 

 are they so fine draion as the fashionable 

 form of a standard rose with an iron prop. 



The mountain-ash, when growing as a 

 tree, is admirably suited to prop a climbing 

 rose. Its foliage is pinnate, and not to be 

 easily distinguished from the foliage of the 

 rose ; the colour of its trunk and that of the 

 stem of the rose are the same ashy grey; 

 in size, it is decidedly a small-growing 

 tree ; in habit it is stifl^ and formal, with 

 spray full of antlers or little hooks, all tend- 

 ing upwards, just as if Dame Nature had 

 made a tree of pegs to hang her rosy man- 

 tle on. Now the price of these living props, 

 three feet high, is three for a penny, and 

 six feet high, only a penny each. Good 



Vol. ii. 47 



plants of mountain-ash were delivered here, 

 carriage paid, this season, at 25s. per 1000, 

 three feet high, and larger sizes at ]d. each, 

 as I have stated. Now, lest any one should 

 imagine that I think of filling up a flower- 

 garden with mountain-ash trees, I must 

 heg leave to state, that where there is room 

 for the rose-trees that I propose, there will 

 be no lack of space for the stakes or props, 

 for they will be within the rose-trees. 

 These rose-trees were never intended for 

 small gardens, and scarcely for large ones: 

 they are the gigantic materials for fields of 

 flowers high and wide, of long and deep 

 avenues, the foreground figures fair and 

 fragrant in the glades and dells of park 

 scenery, where rides and drives invite. 

 The bramble is another brother of the rose 

 family, and this, as well as the mountain- 

 ash, rambles at large by ravine and crag, 

 growing freely in any reasonable situation, 

 and in spots where neither grazing nor til- 

 lage can be carried on. Surel}-, then, we 

 may reasonably hope to establish a climb- 

 ing rose in a localitj^ where two brothers of 

 the same family already flourish. 



The rose and its prop must be planted 

 young in well-prepared earth ; for, be it re- 

 membered, they will just grow and flower 

 in proportion as the^ are fed, and therefore 

 such a spread of foliage as is here expected 

 requires something like a vine-border to 

 give the necessary supplies of food, &c. 



I do not write to please those parties who 

 know so little of rose culture as to imagine 

 that roses will not climb very high trees and 

 flower freely. The Rosa arvensis climbs to 

 the top of an arbor vitte in the grounds here 

 20 or 30 feet, and its long and gracefully 

 bending shoots maybe seen dangling from 

 the branches of high trees in the woods here 

 and elsewhere. Loudon mentions (Arb. 

 Brit., p. 790) Eastwell Park, Pains Hill, 

 Claremont, Pepperharrow, Spring Grove, 

 and Fonthill, where simila^r specimens may 

 be seen of Rosa arvensis, and particularly 

 the Ayrshire and the evergreen roses, pro- 

 ducing a fine effect, flowering, and even 

 forming festoons among high trees. I need 

 scarcely add, that in length and strength of 

 vine many of the cultivated roses equal and 

 even surpass the wild rose. I have seen 

 climbing roses against a wall here and at 



