GARDEN ROSES 



Those who follow the developments of taste in modern gardening, cannot 

 fail to perceive how great has been the recent increase in the numbers of 

 Roses that are for true beauty in the garden. 



It is only some of the elders among those who take a true and lively 

 interest in their gardens who know what a scarcity of good things there 

 was thirty years ago, or even twenty, compared with what we have now 

 to choose from. Still, of the Roses commonly known as garden Roses, 

 there were even then China Roses, Damask, Cabbage and Moss, 

 Sweetbriars and Cinnamon Roses, and the free-growing Ayrshires, which 

 are even now among the most indispensable. 



But the wave of indifferent taste in gardening that had flooded all 

 England with the desire for summer bedding plants, to the almost entire 

 exclusion of the worthier occupants of gardens, had for a time pushed aside 

 the older garden Roses. For whereas in the earlier half of the nineteenth 

 century these good old Roses were much planted and worthily used, with 

 the coming of the fashion for the tender bedding plants they fell into 

 general disuse ; and, with the accompanying neglect of many a good 

 hardy border plant, left our gardens very much the poorer, and, except 

 for special spring bedding, bare of flowers for all the earlier part of the 

 year. 



Now we have learnt the better ways, and have come to see that good 

 gardening is based on something more stable and trustworthy than any 

 passing freak of fashion. And though the foolish imp fashion will 

 always pounce upon something to tease and worry over, and to set up on 

 a temporary pedestal only to be pulled down again before long, so also it 



79 



