70 THE ROSE BOOK 



It quickly develops into a huge thorny bush, eight or ten 

 feet high, and as far through. It will grow in any aspect, 

 although only a sunny spot finds it at its best. When, 

 after a year or two, this rose is thoroughly at home, 

 it produces great thick shoots very freely, and they 

 are covered from tip to base with the most formidable 

 thorns. It is really so aggressive, that sooner or later 

 you give up all attempt at pruning, and resign your- 

 self to cutting out an old shoot here and a dead one 

 there, which is, as it happens, all the pruning Conrad 

 Meyer needs if you cut it down in the March following 

 planting. It is a happy rose to grow ; you cannot fail 

 to be impressed by its astonishing vigour and the joy 

 of life that possesses it, and to become imbued with 

 some of the happiness with which it is so obviously 

 bubbling over. When, with the last days of May, the 

 giant leaves are spread, and the glorious blooms unfold, 

 it is a grey day for the rest of the garden. Conrad Meyer 

 arrogates to himself your admiration: the big, bold, 

 rose-pink flowers, of ideal form and most delicious fra- 

 grance, compel your unstinted and whole-souled delight, 

 and the profusion with which they come fills you with 

 wonder and all the other garden flowers with envy. 



I have only one plant of him (having no room for 

 more), but I have been impressed with the way in which 

 he has risen superior to circumstances, absolutely setting 

 them at naught, and revelling in triumph at their dis- 

 comfiture. For I set him at the foot of a fence facing 

 north, where the soil was good, but always more or 

 less damp, and, therefore, difficult to dig. There were 



