198 PRACTICAL GARDENING. 



fit for grouping and forming the inner plants of a close border ; 

 no pruning nor management that we can suggest will make 

 them fit speciniei-is to stand alone. Yet they are superb roses, 

 and fit to plant among a clump of shrubs, so as not to show 

 the stock, or upon such dwarf stems, as shall not even indicate 

 that they are worked at all. We are not so nice about what 

 appears planted in the ground, as we are when roses are to 

 form ornamental standards ; and be it remembered, that those 

 who give orders for roses should always inform the nursery- 

 man exactly what they want their roses for. If they require 

 standards to grow in permanent situations, and to form grace- 

 ful heads, they should not fail to say so. If they require very 

 large or remarkably fine specimens for exhibition in bunches, 

 or in single specimens, it is quite requisite the dealer should 

 be made acquainted with the fact ; and, moreover, if they 

 want roses to group in such a manner that they only show 

 their growing parts, the upright grooving ones are the very 

 best, for they bear aU. their bloom on the top, and are, in fact, 

 only adapted to stand in groups where their stems are hidden, 

 or to be close to the ground, that their blooms may be under 

 the eye. There is a good deal of tact required in pruning, 

 but some kinds are of such graceful habit that they look better 

 under even bad management than some others would with all 

 we can do for them ; for, unless the branches are inclined 

 to grow outwards instead of upwards, all we can do wiU not 

 help them much. If you already have weU-established plants 

 of the kind which grows upright, and where, therefore, you 

 cannot form a good head, choose whether you will remove 

 them to form a hill, or clump of roses, somewhere else, or plant 

 half-a-dozen round each, to make smaller groups on the spot 

 occupied by the standard ; but you will assuredly never make 

 good-looking, or even tolerable heads of them. We have seen 

 the branches weighed down into their places, but when the 

 new growth comes, that goes bolt upright again, and the side 

 is as straight, and as bare of flowers, and as ugly, as when the 

 branches all spring from the cent:te, only larger. We have 

 seen many fine collections spoiled by this sad fault — perhaps 

 a hundred or two standard roses about the place in appropriate 

 and prominent situations, and one half of them of that ugly 

 growth which only exhibit the side to us, and, contrasted with 

 others which form a graceful head, they spoil the whole con- 

 cern. Lose no time in trying to change the nat^jre of these 



