PRUNING STANDARDS. 51 
Roses, and. not only that, but a practical idea of actual work. 
For the rest, knife exercise must hold sway. To learn prun- 
ing as it should be learned, the grower must have a book in 
one hand and a knife in the other. The book should be clear, 
and the knife should be sharp. The writer of the book should 
express his views boldly, and the student should cut boldly. 
To sum up, no pruning is bad ; hard pruning is good chiefly 
for the exhibitor, moderate pruning is best for the large army 
of Rose growers who, like myself, grow a collection of Roses 
of various classes, and want blooms from them, not only of 
true character and presentable form, but in large numbers 
for cutting. 
The varieties which naturally produce long, strong shoots 
must always be lightly pruned, hanauie they produce their 
finest blooms from the uppermost buds; on the other hand, 
those sorts which naturally make short, twiggy wood may be 
closely pruned, because they produce their best blooms near 
the base. 
In all cases the bushes must be kept open. In crowded 
bushes the wood remains soft and unripe. No matter what 
the system of pruning adopted, the wood must be plump and 
firm, otherwise the buds will be weak, and the shoots incapable 
of flowering well. It is particularly necessary to study this 
point with naturally coarse growers. The best plan with such 
is to thin out some of the shoots altogether, cutting them clean 
away from the base, like overcrowded Raspberry canes. Those 
left will then ripen, and with very little pruning will flower 
abundantly. 
If Roses have been injured by frost, pruning time in spring 
may be a period of some little anxiety, and discrimination may 
be called for. The strong, ripened shoots which we should, in 
the ordinary way, have pruned little, we may have to cut 
hard, in fact we must keep cutting farther and farther down 
until we have removed every bit of brown pith, and come to 
the greenish grey healthy wood. 
The latest growth made, i.e. the wood which develops 
towards autumn, is naturally the softest and most liable to 
injury. This, being near the extremities of the bush, goes 
first in pruning. 
Pruning Standards. 
The pruning of standards is conducted on much the same 
lines as that of dwarfs. As more people bud standards than 
bud dwarfs, it will be well to show, in Fig. 21 (p. 49), he stages by 
which a good flowering head is developed from the bud in- 
serted insummer. The reader will recollect that in the chapter 
on propagation he was advised to insert his buds as close to 
the main stem of the Brier as he could get them. If he will 
now glance at A B and C he will learn the subsequent stages 
