CHAPTER XXII 



ROSES UNDER GLASS 



To the true lover of the Rose it is a great deprivation 

 to have Roses in flower during less than half the year, 

 which must be the case if they be only cultivated in 

 the open ground. It is, however, possible to have 

 Roses in bloom all the year round if they be grown 

 under glass as well as in the garden, although the 

 supply of blooms may be scanty during the most 

 gloomy part of the winter. For it is the paucity of 

 sunshine and its feeble character which render the 

 growth of the Queen of Flowers under glass in this 

 country so much less satisfactory at that season than 

 in America and other lands where the winter sunshine 

 is stronger and more frequent. To dwellers in the 

 neighbourhood of large towns where Roses cannot be 

 successfully cultivated in the open ground, a Rose 

 house is a great boon, as the plants can there be 

 grown in the soil best suited to their requirements, 

 and the foliage kept clean by frequent syringeing. 

 As roses delight in a free, cool and rather humid at- 

 mosphere and in an unrestricted root-run, they do not 

 naturally adapt themselves to ordinary greenhouse 

 culture. If, however, their requirements be under- 

 stood and complied with as well as the altered cir- 

 cumstances under which they are grown will admit, 



