84 THE BOOK OF ROSES 



Rumsey (which last is proof against mildew), and Mrs 

 Sharman Crawford. 



All the Rugosa section do well near towns, and have 

 the advantage of bearing very decorative berries in the 

 Autumn. Amongst them Conrad Ferdinand Meyer is 

 greatly recommended. It is a pale pink, a hybrid twice 

 removed from Rugosa, and is well known for its remark- 

 ably luxuriant growth. It sometimes makes shoots ten 

 feet long in a single season. It is a very early-flowering 

 Rose, coming into bloom even before Gloire de Dijon, 

 and it has a very sweet scent. 



The town dweller who loves and would like to grow 

 good Roses may take heart at the favourable view of his 

 chances taken by Mrs S. Montagu, in a paper contributed 

 to the National Rose Society. Mrs Montagu lives in 

 the north of London, in the Regent's Park district, and 

 therefore has the advantage of a fairly high situation 

 and the neighbourhood of a large open space, which 

 doubtless helps to keep the air fresh and pure, but even 

 with these advantages the handicap is sufficiently heavy, 

 and the result she obtains is the more encouraging. 

 Mrs Montagu favours the following treatment. The 

 Roses are grown wherever a bed or border affords 

 sufficient sun, some of them being standards and some 

 bushes. They are arranged in groups or singly, and 

 " given a favourable Summer, the results are sufficiently 

 good to be very pleasant." They are planted in a 

 mixture of yellow loam and old manure, with some grit 

 for the roots, on a clay subsoil, and mulched in the 

 Autumn with short manure. About every four years a 

 top-dressing of lime is given to purify the soil, and 

 during the growing season they have occasional doses of 

 some good fertiliser. They are pruned back hard, and 

 before growth starts they are thoroughly cleaned with 

 soap and water applied with a painter's brush and then 

 washed off with plain water, so that the bark may be 



