General Notices. 233 



bower. A mountain-ash in the grounds here has held up to admiration a 

 plant of the honeysuckle high and wide for many years. A tall spruce fir 

 propped for a long time another honeysuckle close to the above-mentioned 

 specimen. I mention this evergreen tree with its honeysuckle, to prove that 

 climbers or twiners will live and flower among the spray of evergreen trees ; 

 and further, to show that this is not a new combination, 1 need only quote 

 the couplet,- 



" Not a pine in my grove is there seen 

 But a woodbine entwines it around." 



Cottam and Hallen's cast-iron rose-stake may be regarded as perhaps the 

 most ornamental and economical dead prop in use. This elegant stake I 

 quote here, that I may compare its cost with the price of those I am about 

 to introduce, and likewise that we may continue its services to prop the tiny 

 growing roses worked upon other rose-stems, in order to bring them near 

 the eye, so that ladies may closely examine the rose without stooping, and 

 without being tempted to pluck it ; for, of all the casualties to be guarded 

 against, that of not leaving the rose upon its stem until the flov/er has faded 

 is the most important. The price of this stake, six feet long, and strong in 

 proportion to its length, is said to be Is. 6^d. (Encyclopaedia of Gardening.) 

 The square heavy heart-ofoak stake, if sufficiently strong to be durable, 

 and well painted, will cost little less than the iron one above quoted. The 

 drawbacks to dead props are, first, the necessity for continual painting, then 

 rust in the iron under ground, and rot in wood at the surface of the ground, 

 the too slender form of the iron stake, and the unnatural square form of the 

 wooden one, so much at variance with the nicely-balanced and symmetrical 

 proportions of live timber, whose wooden trunks are never square like our 

 wooden rose-prop, neither are they so fine-drawn as the fashionable form of 

 a standard rose with an iron prop. 



The mountain-ash, when growing as a tree, is admirably suited to prop a 

 climbing rose. Its foliage is pinnate, and not to be easily distinguished 

 from the foliage of the rose ; the color of its trunk and that of the stem of 

 the rose are the same ashy grey ; in size, it is decidedly a small-growing 

 tree ; in habit, it is stifl!'and formal, with spray full of antlers or little hooks, 

 all tending upwards, just as if Dame Nature had made a tree of pegs to 

 hang her rosy mantle on. Now the price of these living props, three feet 

 high, is THREE FOR A PENNY, and six feet high, only a penny each. Good 

 plants of mountain-ash were delivered here, carriage-paid, this season, at 

 25s. per 1,000, three feet high, and larger, sizes at Id. each, as 1 have 

 stated. Now, lest any one should imagine that I think of filling up a 

 flower-garden with mountain-ash trees, I must beg leave to state, that, 

 where there is room for the rose-trees that I propose, there will be no lack 

 of space for the stakes or props, for they will be within the rose-trees. 

 These rose-trees were never intended for small gardens, and scarcely for 

 large ones : they are the gigantic materials for fields of flowers high and 

 wide, of long and deep avenues, the foreground figures fair and fragrant in 

 the glades and dells of park scenery, where rides and drives invite. The 

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