ANNUAL WINTER MEETING. 117 



our garden gate and pass through with you to hud and blossom, whose 

 unfolding and developement have constituted at once my study and my 

 delight. 



As we pass down the garden paths, we discover that I was fortunate in 

 finding here ten years ago sheltering hedges and attractive borders of 

 fragant roses, with good staying qualities; they had been planted here by 

 loving hands and nurtured into vigor by thoughtful intelligence. To this- 

 day, with all the experiments that I have since tried, I confess to a very 

 great fondness for that same old Provence rose, which I so well remember 

 in my father's garden, and which was the first rose grown here to any ex- 

 tent, because of its hardiness, and the impression which I am told pre- 

 vailed in early days that no other could well survive the extreme frost and 

 cold of this rigorous climate. 



There is little need to call the attention of your experienced eye to the 

 special advantage of the soil of our garden for successful rose growing. 

 Just here upon this ridge of our city's ground, it so happens that this 

 prime condition is more favorable than almost any other in the town, be- 

 cause of its natural clay soil, so vitally essential to the success of the 

 rosarium; sandy food, we know, starves and kills even unwearied effort in 

 the life and glory of the rose. Jack frost, too, deserves my appreciative 

 thanks, that he forgets to put on his chilly coat until he has paid his 

 compliments nearly a week earlier far down in the heart of the city. 



As we wander about the garden, you will remark the absolute perfec- 

 tion of natural drainage here, and if we look about on all sides it is ob- 

 servable that the absence of smoke and dust and railway traffic, in which 

 unfavorable atmosphere the brave rose droops and fades, is another con- 

 dition to be congratulated upon. 



But I greatly fear if I enumerate and call your attention to many more 

 natural advantages of our rose garden, as I found it, that you will fail to 

 credit me with little else than buying roses at haphazard and planting 

 them anywhere, — and I have to confess to a good deal of original sin 

 in this direction. 



It became early my pleasure and object to extend and increase the 

 varieties of our garden, an undertaking prolific with difficulties at the 

 very outset. But in roses, as with all things else in life, I reasoned it to 

 be wise to set the mark high. 



My imagination had long been stimulated with Pliny's account of the 

 rose gardens of the Eomans; I was charmed and interested in the history 

 of Charlemagne's policy in the establishment of rose gardens by royal 

 edict; and the beautiful rosariums, founded by Cosmo de Medici, stirred 

 quick response in my ambitious heart. True, their floral pageant filled 

 its lungs with the mild atmosphere of sunny Italy, but in and about 

 Savannah and Charleston and the bright, warm portions of our own at- 

 tractive clime, I came upon such bewildering roses in our travels there, 

 that Mr. Nagel will remember the first large lot I selected and induced 

 my husband to send up to Villa Eosa from Savannah, and the beautiful 

 snowy creeper La Marque, with its roots torn out of the soil of Charleston 

 to grace our arches and floral bowers. 



No babe in swaddling clothes was ever handled more lovingly, and I 

 think lean safely add, more ignorantly, than the attentions I showered 

 upon those southern belles in the first years of my experiment with this 

 noble flower. 



