CHAPTER XXXIX 



THE WORTHY USE OF ROSES 



FOR a full consideration of the Rose as a garden 

 flower, one must look to such a work as " Roses 

 for English Gardens/' but as the Rose is a flowering 

 shrub it cannot be omitted from the present volume. 



In these days of horticultural prosperity and rapid 

 progress, when there would appear to be one or 

 more specialists devoting themselves to every worthy 

 flower, we need scarcely say that the Rose has not 

 been forgotten. Indeed, within the memory of many 

 who have watched its culture for the last forty years, 

 the rapid advance is nothing less than astonishing. 

 Our own veteran growers and some of the foreign 

 firms seem to have vied with each other in produc- 

 ing new forms in the Hybrid Perpetuals and in the 

 Teas, but it has been almost within the last decade 

 that growers have not only deepened the interest 

 in the cultivation of the Rose, but have immensely 

 widened it by striking out in new directions. 



It is now many years since the late Henry Bennett 

 raised such lovely hybrids as Grace Darling and 

 Mrs. John Laing, but the parents of these were still 

 among the well-known H.P.'s and Teas and Chinas. 

 But of late years hybridists have taken in hand some 

 of the handsomer of the species, and by working 



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