CHAP. XLir. 7JOSA CE.!:. ^O'SA. 807 



Pruning. The rose requires to be pruned every year; the strong-growing 

 hardy kinds in the autumn, or the beginning of winter, and the more tender 

 kinds eai'ly in spring. Dumont recommends pruning the early-flowering sorts 

 in autumn, and the late sorts during spring ; but neither during winter. 

 Rivers observes that pruning should always be performed in October or 

 March ; but October pruning, he says, will be found decidedly the most ad- 

 vantageous, as, the plant having less wood and fewer buds to nourish during 

 the winter, the buds left will have acquired extra vigour for pushing in the 

 spring. This is a valuable remark, and will apply to all ligneous plants 

 whatever. In the operation of pruning three objects ought to be kept in 

 view : the removal of the old wood, because, in most varieties, it is only the 

 young wood that produces large and finely formed flowers ; the thinning out and 

 shortening of the young wood, that the flowers produced may be fewer, and 

 consequently have more nourishment, and more light and air, and thus become 

 stronger; and the forming of the head, or bush, into some symmetrical shape. 

 Some varieties require much less pruning than others ; and climbers, and 

 most of the varieties of the Scotch rose, should, in general, only have their 

 shoots thinned out, and should be but seldom, if ever, shortened. In 

 shortening young shoots, not more than from two to three, or, at most, four 

 buds, should be left on each. Tiie cuts should be made close above the bud, 

 about the thickness of a sixpence from it, and sloping away from it at an 

 angle of about 45^. A standard rose, properly pruned, will, in general, pre- 

 sent a head, in the winter season, not moi-e than 1 ft. in diameter; nevertheless, 

 some of the vigorous-growing kinds will 

 flower very well with heads of twice or 

 thrice that size. (See Jigs. 543, 544, and 

 545.) The peculiarities in treatment 

 which different varieties require, whether 

 as regards pruning, or other points of 

 culture, will be found noticed under their 

 respective names in preceding pages ; 

 and in Mi*. Rivers's observations on the 

 different sorts grown in his nursery : see 

 p. 780. to p. 783. 



Summer Pruning. By cutting out wood at different times during summer, a 

 succession of roses may be produced, more especially in the Noisettes, and 

 other China varieties, and in the rose des quatre saisons : but this practice 

 should never be adopted as a general one ; because, by occasioning extraordi- 

 nary exertion in one season,' it weakens the plants for the year following. 

 The only kinds of summer pruning that we tliink generally applicable and 

 unobjectionable are, thinning out with the finger and thumb the flower buds 

 as soon as they are discernible, so as to leave no more than what the plant 

 can bring to perfection ; and, after these buds have expanded and begun to 

 decay, cutting them ofFclose to the floral leaf. In performing this last operation, 

 none of the leaves ought to be cut off; because the effect of that would, with 

 many varieties, be to occasion the production of a second shoot, and thus 

 to weaken the plant, as well as to render it unsightly. There are some roses 

 which have handsome calyxes, and others which produce large and showy 

 coloured hips, such as the apple-bearing rose : in both these cases, instead of 

 cutting off the decayed flower, the decayed petals only should be picked out; 

 and this, also, should be done in the case of those roses which, when the 

 stalks of the decayed flowers are cut off, are apt to produce summer shoots. 

 In the case of single roses, the cutting off of the decayed flowers is not 

 so necessary as in the double sorts ; as it is the multiplicity of petals in a 

 state of incipient decay which gives that slovenly appearance, so contrary 

 to the spirit of what we call the gardenesque, and what our enlightened and 

 elegant contemporary and friend, M. Soulange-Bodin, calls la belle culture, as 

 being in gardening what the hcllcx Icttrcs are in literature, or the beaux arts 

 in the arts. 



