vI PRUNING 101 
amateur will not be doing wrong if he picks his days 
and gets through as much as he can whenever it is 
warm and fine. If some are pruned in the first week 
of the month and some in the last, bitter weather 
intervening, but little difference will be found in the 
time of flowering. It is best to leave Tea Roses in 
the open undisturbed till April ; and it is safer to leave 
the early-flowering Hybrid Teas also till that time, 
especially in situations liable to May frosts, for it 
is the early strong shoots whose buds are already 
formed which suffer most in such visitations. On 
the other hand, in early seasons, like 1893, Roses 
which have made some growth at the top are apt to 
‘bleed ’’ when pruned severely, especially where old 
wood is cut into. In some cases the soil around 
the roots is kept quite damp from this cause for 
some days and the matter looks serious but does not 
often prove to be so: the cut heals in about a week, 
and the subsequent growth does not seem to be 
impaired. 
As to the method, we will take first, as being the 
most complicated, the case of summer Roses, H.P.s, 
and other fairly strong varieties where the object is 
to form handsome plants for general decoration with 
a quantity of good blooms for cutting. 
The first care will be to pull up and test all stakes, 
as recommended on p. 37, and the next to cut out all 
the dead wood, and all wood however thick and old 
which, as shown by the small growth made last 
season, is becoming weakly in comparison with the 
rest of the plant. Now we can study the whole and 
see what we have got left. Our object is to form a 
well-shaped head or plant, and by ‘“‘ well-shaped ” I 
mean that the plant itself should be of the even 
