CLIMBING ROSES. 255 
earth. We remember seeing a fine plant of this description with beau- 
tiful blue flowers at a cottage situated on a dreary common in Hamp- 
shire, where no one could at that time have expected to have found a 
common-coloured Hydrangea. The owner of the plant refused ten 
guineas for this flower, as it was the only one that had been seen in 
the country, and the circumstance of a poor cottager having refused 
so large a sum for a plant excited great curiosity, and brought all the 
neighbouring inhabitants to see it. The poor woman, although she 
did not like to part with the plant that had been reared by a child 
whom she had lost, gladly sold cuttings to all that required them, 
every one of which when they blossomed produced flowers of the ori- 
ginal rose-colour. 
We have since learnt that the poor woman’s plant had been reared 
from a cutting of the common rose-coloured variety, and that the 
change was owing to its being planted in the soil of the heathy com- 
_mon on which she resided, mixed with a portion of turf ashes, whilst 
those who obtained cuttings planted them in good garden soil. 
During the last year we saw exhibited at the London Horticultural 
Society a very beautiful plant of the Hydrangea, covered with cymes 
of flowers of a fine blue colour. This plant was grown in a pot of 
earth taken from Wimbledon Common, without any other mixture, 
which proves that the change of colour is produced by the nature of 
the soil, and it is now pretty generally known that some sorts of peat 
earth, as well as the yellow loam of heathy grounds, will produce this 
effect. [We have seen many proofs of this. —Conpuctor. ] 
CLIMBING ROSES. 
BY AMELIA. 
I LaTey saw a steep bank of strong loamy soil, sloping down from 
a gentleman’s villa at its side, to the public road about thirty yards in 
length, planted with Roses, that had a very beautiful and interesting 
effect. Along the top, in a straight line, was a row of Boursault, 
Ayrshire, and Sempervirens classes of Roses, planted at six feet apart ; 
these were trained to strong larch poles about eight feet high, having 
their branches left from a foot to half a yard long; these afforded 
supports for the Roses, from which they hung very gracefully, and 
bloomed profusely. Next to this row were Ayrshire and Sempervi- 
rens Roses worked on stems about four feet high, then a row with 
stems about two feet; and, finally, the rest was planted with all such 
Roses, not worked, but on their own roots, and they were permitted to 
ramble about unmolested. J found on inquiry none of the plants 
were ever pruned, but allowed to proceed naturally without restraint. 
Such an ornament in the pleasure ground, or wood, as banks often 
exist in such places, would be highly ornamental, and be done at a 
trifling cost. 
Along the side of a leading straight walk I observed a number of 
tall standard Weeping Roses, consisting of the Climbing, Princess 
