102 PRACTICAL GARDENING. 



flower it is a bank of Roses ; and we have never seen, among 

 all the rose gardens and rosaries in the country, anything 

 more effective. We have seen scores of elaborately worked 

 arches, pillars, and fancy frames on which to grow roses, 

 from the gigantic circular u'onwork like a gasometer frame, at 

 the Crystal Palace to the doorway of a summer house, but never 

 saw anytliing half so effective as a ten-feet border of roses, 

 whose heads nearly touched each other, and formed, as it 

 were, a solid bank of that beautiful family, in endless variety 

 and full bloom, and this on the left hand as well as the right. 

 There are plants that require ornament, plants whose merit is 

 in the form they can be made to assume ; but the Rose is one 

 of the plants which is perfect in itself; it is profanation to 

 make it look artificial ; if it be a climber, let it go up a wall, 

 or a cottage front, or over some inartificial, rudely constructed 

 supports, and cover an avenue ; but it certainly never looks 

 so bad, so out of place, as when constrained to help hide 

 a mechanical arcli, or stick up hke a pole. Let it cMng to the 

 trunk of a tree, or trail on the ground, but save it, oh, save it 

 from being bound hand and foot to the iron birdcage, or the 

 wiry sides of a cockney rosary. 'No matter how the rose is 

 disposed of, in beds, borders, grass plots, or on walls, on the 

 house front, or the gate-post, or climbing the roof of a thatched 

 cottage, it is a gem, and needs no ornamental nor mechanical 

 assistance. All we shall impress on the mind of the rose- 

 grower is, to buy none but continuous blooming varieties ; 

 have a dozen of a sort rather than admit such as bloom a month, 

 and cumber the garden eleven months without showing a 

 flower ; go to a good man, tell him what you want, and take 

 what he recommends ; put the responsibility of a continuous 

 bloom upon him, and tell him you would sooner have a score 

 of one sort than see the head of his rose-trees without a 

 bloom. 



American Gardens. — Those plants which are called 

 American, many of them very improperly, grow best in peat 

 earth, and although a good deal may be done for them by 

 surrounding each with a spade full or two, they will only do 

 well until the roots get through it. The first symptoms of 

 decline are weak shoots, little bloom, and slow growth; in 

 time the ends of the leaves appear as if they were burned, 

 many fall off, the plant gets bare, and they merely exist, or 

 perhaps not that. Rhododendrons, azaleas, andromedas, 



