March 



IRISH GARDENING 



43 



gardens, this plant flowered profusely, and was a 

 beautiful mass of pink. The flowers are small, and 

 borne in close, short racemes of about ten to twenty 

 flowers each. The plant is leafless, but the stems are 

 flattened, green, and whip-like. Like the acacias in 

 the seedling state true leaves are produced. This shrub 

 belongs to the Leguminosse, which, although one of the 

 largest orders of flowering plants, is very thinly repre- 

 sented in New Zealand. Notospartium CarDiichcelice is 

 hardy in most parts of Ireland and round London, but 

 in the colder districts it would require the protection of 

 a wall. R. M. Pollock. 



old useless wood and encourage young timber to come 

 to replace the old. Leave a rose tree alone for several 

 years, and note what happens. Good flowers the first 

 year, provided it has been pruned properly ; plenty of 

 good growth for the following year — second year plenty 

 of poor-quality blooms— no new growth as compared 

 with first year. In the subsequent year you find flowers 

 have diminished very much, but generally from low- 

 down on the old wood a new shoot springs which robs 

 the old wood of most of its vitality, and takes on vigor- 

 ous growth. In the following year this j-oung rod will 

 give some good flowers until in its own time it will be 



Pholo by] U' 



Notospartium Carmich.^ll^ growing in Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin 



Roses. 



By O'Donel Browne, M.D. 



PRUNING, tidying up of beds, and giving a liberal 

 treatment of some artificial manure to get the 

 trees into running order will be every rose 

 grower's work during early March. Seeing that the 

 Royal Horticultural Society intend holding a rose show 

 early in July it behoves all intending exhibitors in the 

 exhibition bloom classes to harden their hearts and use 

 their knives and fingers more severely, as you must 

 only tax your trees with few flowers if you require 

 heavy flowers. As a general rule most ainateurs are 

 sadly ignorant of the art of pruning — they require 

 quantity and quality from the one tree, and this is just 

 what they cannot have. If you require quantity then 

 quality must go, and vice versa. Besides, pruning is a 

 help to a dwarf and standard tree, for by it you remove 



robbed. Pruning assists and keeps a rose tree in health, 

 and keeps it in a natural shapely form instead of allow- 

 ing it to straggle anyhow. Then, again, spores oi 

 disease which are found abundantly on old wood are 

 removed every time you prune, and this in itself keeps 

 your tree healthy. There is one fault I find very com- 

 mon in people's gardens with regard to pruning, and 

 this consists of having a tree with a single rod for some 

 distance from the ground, and then various branches 

 from the top. A single rod is a bad foundation for any 

 tree. Treat such a tree by the hard use of the knife, 

 and get several young rods to branch out from as near 

 the ground as possible. Roses that require light 

 priming are generally liie guilty ones in this class, and 

 to obviate this you should always, so to speak, com- 

 promise the tendency to this fault by removing 

 completely as much old timber as possible, and prune 

 less severely younger wood. Pruning is a difficult 

 matter, and one which requires an enormous amount of 



