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THE FLORISTS MANUAL. 



store or a great profit to the grower, 

 but the popular price catches the men and 

 women who are looking for bargains, 

 and they are numerous. They get well 

 dried out before they get into the pur 

 chaser s garden, and we haven t heard 

 how they thrive. - It is to be hoped they 

 give one final department&quot; flower and 

 then die, which the majority must. 



Whenever you can get roses on their 

 own roots do so. They will be far more 

 satisfactory to your customers. But 

 some of the finest sorts, the Baroness 

 Kothschild type for one, do not grow- 

 well on their own roots, and of those 

 you must rely on the budded plants. 

 If you import the budded stock it should 

 be unpacked and laid in trenches in a 

 coldframe during winter, and when fill 

 ing your orders in the spring see that 

 they are carefully planted, and insist 

 on their being cut down to within six 

 inches of the ground. 



If you handle but a few hundred they 

 can be potted when received in the fall; 

 a pot that will just hold the roots is 

 large enough. These plants will come 

 along slowly in April and be well rooted 

 by about May 1, and if lots of ventila 

 tion has been given, or better still the 

 sashes removed, they must be satisfactory 

 to your . customers, as you should not 

 lose one. But you want more than the 

 department store jarice for them; you 

 should get at least $6 per dozen. 



If you have land of your own you 

 should propagate during fall and win 

 ter all the hybrid perpetual roses that 

 do well on their own roots. Small 

 plants put out in May will be most satis 

 factory plants for your customers by 

 the following spring, or even the first 

 fall if they have had good soil, but 

 it is safer to plant in the spring. Tell 

 your customers about the Manetti stock, 

 and teach them to distinguish between 

 the suckers of the stock and the rose. 

 But when on their own roots danger of 

 that trouble is impossible. 



The so-called tree roses are not to 

 be recommended for our climate. They 

 are called standard roses in Great 

 Britain, and in that form countless thou 

 sands are grown. Here they look very 

 charming the first season perhaps, and 

 perhaps the next, but the third usually 

 finishes them. They are budded on the 

 wild briar. The briar stalks are col 

 lected from the hedgerows and thickets, 

 and are sold to the nurseryman tied up 

 in bundles like an English tourist trans 

 ports his walking sticks; and there is 

 little more apparent life about them 

 than a bundle of golf sticks, yet they 

 grow, and on a side shoot near the top 

 the bud is inserted the following June 

 or July, and in another year they are 

 sold. But don t buy them if you live 

 north of Washington, D. C., unless you 

 live in the northern Pacific states, where 

 many plants flourish that won t in our 

 eastern states. The dwarf or bush roses 

 are nvuch better for us. 



Since the above was written I have 

 had some very gratifying experience 

 with hybrid perpetual roses, some ex 

 perience that I am justified in looking 

 back upon with pride and most happy 

 memories, yet success or failure all 



hinged on a few very simple conditions 

 of treatment, as is often the case. I 

 am certain that the great disappoint 

 ments that ensue with many of our 

 patrons when they make a bed of roses 

 is the impatience to have roses the first 

 year. It can t be done, and your patrons 

 should be given a lecture and convinced. 



To return to our story. We received 

 in the spring of 1900 about 4,000 hybrid 

 perpetual roses from two firms of nur 

 serymen. It was about June 8 when 

 they were received. They were plants 

 that had been dug the previous fall and 

 were left over after their spring sales, 

 so by the time they reached us they 

 were badly in need of more congenial 

 environment. They were duly planted 

 with care and science, and well do we 

 remember on the scorching days of June 

 planting these dried-up roses with but 

 a forlorn hope of any good results. Work 

 is unpleasant unless you have confidence 

 that your work will be fruitful. A good 

 gardener or florist, when he sows a seed 

 or puts in a cutting or plants an apple- 

 tree, should see in his mind s eye the 

 seed develop into a flowering plant, the 

 cutting grow into a strong plant and 

 the tree bearing fruit, and then he 

 should be happy if not he is in the 

 dark and working in a fog. 



I must say here that the soil of the 

 beds for these roses was about the ideal, 

 and perhaps their great success should 

 be principally attributed to the splendid 

 soil. It was a heavy clay loam, cut the 

 previous fall off a pasture, about four 

 inches thick, and piled up and added to 

 it was one- fourth of cow manure chopped 

 down in early spring. Of such ma 

 terial, at least a foot deep, were the 

 rose beds formed. The roses had been 

 pruned rather low when they arrived, 

 so we planted them without further 

 pruning. In two weeks many showed no 

 signs of breaking into growth, so the 

 shears were again brought into use and 

 two or three inches more were taken off. 



This left them very like the Crimson 

 Ramber, difficult to locate, but it saved 

 their lives and very soon they were 

 bursting into growth all over the stems. 

 As soon as the little plants started to 

 grow we spread two or three inches of 

 rotted manure over the entire surface 

 of the beds. This may have been a 

 stimulant to the feeding roots, but it 

 was put on more as a mulch to keep 

 the beds from getting parched on the 

 surface. With a heavy watering every 

 week if there was an absence of rain, 

 by September these roses had made five 

 or six shoots or canes and three to five 

 feet high^ Varieties differ greatly in 

 strength of growth, but I remember 

 many growths of Ulrich Brunner fully 

 five feet and as thick as your little 

 finger. Now this great growth was 

 rather soft and not well ripened, and 

 protection was needed, so after there 

 was an inch of frost in the ground we 

 covered the beds with eight inches of 

 strawy manure and leaves, of which we 

 had an abundance. This was evenly 

 spread over the beds and well up around 

 each plant. No further attention was 

 given to the tops, because I knew they 

 would be killed whatever we did, and 



that was not of the slightest consequence. 

 As it happened, during very severe 

 weather we had a steady blanket of 

 eight inches of snow. When the bluebird 

 arrived and the snow melted away we 

 found our leaves and straw had shrunk 

 to three or four inches, and down to 

 the snow line the rose canes were killed 

 back. This was as it should be, for 

 if winter had not killed tue tops we 

 should have cut them down anyway. 



I shall bother you with no more de 

 tails, but simply say that from the end 

 of June, and lasting a full month, these 

 beds were a sight that I hardly expect 

 ever to see again. As a pleasant recol 

 lection and evidence that they were a 

 great success, I must be pardoned for 

 recalling an incident tuat occurred about 

 July 1, 1901. I was proudly showing 

 some New York florist these beds and 

 was standing near a bed of 500 Brun- 

 ners, when a venerable old gentleman 

 hobbled across the grass and on finding 

 that I was the man he was looking for, 

 he gave me a paternal slap on the 

 shoulder and said : Mr. S., these are 

 the grandest rose beds I ever saw. It 

 was Mr. Ellwanger, of Rochester, N. Y., 

 wno had supplied 2,000 of the roses. 

 What more praise did I need! None. 

 It is such words that make you thank 

 ful you are here. Now all this may 

 seem formidable to read, yet it is very 

 simple if a few rules are remembered. 



First, don t expect to pick roses the 

 first summer from plants, nor the follow 

 ing summer if planted in the fall. Al 

 ways give them a fresh soil, and es 

 pecially avoid one that has already 

 grown roses. Roses are seen growing in 

 very different qualities and textures of 

 soil, and while the heavy loam is most 

 assuredly the best suited for these hardy 

 plants, of greater importance is it that 

 it shall not be worn out. No amount 

 of manure will restore what is essential 

 to the rose. A soil that for years has 

 been saturated with animal manure and 

 will grow prize celery or cauliflower, 

 would be a total failure with roses. The 

 remaining important thing is the use of 

 the shears. Without pruning low down, 

 without a vigorous growth the first sum 

 mer, you cannot expect fine roses. The 

 second year of their flowering and the 

 thira and every succeeding year there 

 may be less need of protection or per 

 haps artificial watering, but the same 

 pruning must be done every spring. 

 That is just as necessary as the first 

 year they flowered. This will be best 

 understood by saying that if a strong 

 shoot has borne a flower, the following 

 spring cut it back to within three eyes 

 of the previous year s growth. 



In concluding these reminiscences I 

 will add that the roses offered by our 

 American nurserymen are to be pre 

 ferred to the imported stock. They are 

 almost always budded lower and should 

 be much fresher, which means a better 

 chance of living. 



Don t think the date quoted, first days 

 of June, is the time to plant. That 

 only proves how you can overcome a poor 

 start. As soon as the ground is dry in 

 April or early May is the time to plant 

 hardy roses, as it is for any deciduous 



