assails and would make its own for a time, some one or other point of 

 garden practice. Just now it is the pergola and the Japanese garden ; and 

 truly wonderful are the absurdities committed in the name of both. 



But the sober, thoughtful gardener smiles within himself and lets the 

 freaks of fashion pass by. If he has some level place where a straight 

 covered way of summer greenery would lead pleasantly from one quite 

 definite point to another, and if he feels quite sure that his garden-scheme 

 and its environment will be the better for it, and if he can afford to build 

 a sensible structure, with solid piers and heavy oak beams, he will do well 

 to have a pergola. If he has travelled in Japan, and lived there for some 

 time and acquired the language, and has deeply studied the mental 

 attitude of the people with regard to their gardens, and imbibed the 

 traditional lore so closely bound up with their horticultural practice, and 

 is also a practical gardener in England — then let him make a Japanese 

 garden, if he will and can; but he will be the wiser man if he lets it alone. 

 Even with all the knowledge indicated, and, indeed, because of its 

 acquirement, he probably would not attempt it. When a Japanese 

 garden merely means a space of pleasure-ground where plants, natives of 

 Japan, are grown in a manner suitable for an English garden, there is but 

 little danger of going wrong, but such danger is considerable when an 

 attempt is made to garden in the Japanese manner. 



This is a wide digression from the subject of garden Roses, and yet 

 excusable in that it can scarcely be too often urged that any attempt to 

 practise anything in horticulture for no better reason than because it is 

 the fashion, can only lead to debasement and can only achieve futility. 



Now that there are large numbers of people who truly love their 

 gardens, and who show evidence of it by giving them much care and 

 thought and loving labour, the old garden Roses have been sought for 

 and have been restored to their former place of high favour. And our 

 best nurserymen have not been slow to see what would be acceptable in 

 well-cared-for gardens throughout the length and breadth of the land ; 

 so that the last few years have seen an extraordinary activity in the 

 production of good Roses for garden effect. The free-growing Rosa 

 polyantha of the Himalayas has been employed as a seed or pollen-bearing 

 parent, and from it have been developed first the well-known Crimson 



