1 42 FROM A MIDDLESEX GARDEN 



rose found in village gardens of to-day, and are still the 

 most fragrant of any ; they were also the rose of old painters. 

 Damask roses there were, crimson and white, but semi-double. 

 Sometimes a bee would unconsciously fertilise a white rose 

 with the pollen of a red, and there came a new variety, 

 striped red and white, which the raiser named the York and 

 Lancaster. This rose is sometimes yet to be found in old 

 nurseries. These old-time blooms were probably the roses 

 that erstwhile grew in Temple Gardens, and became the 

 distinctive badges of York and Lancaster. 



There are no descriptions of the rose that I know of 

 more quaint than those to be found in the delightful volumes 

 of England's two old botanists, Parkinson and Gerarde. 

 Parkinson says : " The great varietie of roses is much to 

 bee admired, beeing more than is to bee seene in any other 

 shrubby plant that I know, both for colour, forme, and smell. 

 I have to furnish this garden thirty sorts at least, every one 

 notably differing from the other and all fit to bee here enter- 

 tained : for there are some other that, beeing wilde and of no 

 beauty or smell, we forbeare, and leave to their wilde habi- 

 tations." Gerarde says: "The plant of roses, though it be 

 a shrub full of prickles, yet it had been more fit and con- 

 venient to have placed it with the most glorious flowers of 

 the world than to insert it here (the third booke of the 

 ' Historic of Plants ') among base and thornie shrubs ; for 

 the rose doth deserve the chiefest and most principall place 

 among all flowers whatsoever, being not merely esteemed for 

 his beautie, vertues, and his fragrant and odoriferous smell, 

 but because it is the honour and ornament of our English 

 sceptre, as by conjunction appeareth in the uniting of those 

 two most royal houses of Lancaster and York, which pleasant 



