THE DAWN OF SPRING 



and in the second because, if he had, they could not be March 

 planted for several weeks. But it may be desirable to ^"^5 

 order the plants now, for delivery in May, especially if 

 new and scarce varieties are wanted, to avoid the risk of 

 the dealer being sold out of special sorts required. 



Planting Roses. — In the autumn chapters I give the 

 orthodox advice about planting Roses, but what of the 

 amateur who, about to begin gardening, reads this book 

 in spring ? He will want to know if he really must wait 

 until autumn before he plants — if he actually must miss 

 the whole of the season before him ? I hasten to assure 

 him that he is under no such painful obligation. Nay^ 

 more, I give him my unsullied word that I have planted 

 many thousands of Roses, have planted the greater part 

 of them, from force of circumstances, in spring, and had 

 no failures worthy of the name, all that I have had to 

 deplore being the loss of an odd plant here and there. I 

 have never seriously assured myself that I prefer planting 

 Roses in spring to planting them in autumn, it has 

 merely happened that I have had to do so ; yet so uni- 

 formly successful have been the results that I find myself 

 not infrequently arguing in favour of spring planting 

 with too-strenuous opponents of it. I do not aggres- 

 sively assert that spring planting is superior to autumn, 

 but if I hear a rosarian condemning spring planting in 

 toto, I feel impelled to rise and crush him with figures. 

 Of course he never is crushed, really ; one cannot abso- 

 lutely squelch a rosarian — the most that one can hope 

 for is his temporary subsidence under an avalanche of 

 statistics. 



Spring is a wide term, and there is a world of 

 difference, speaking horticulturally, between early spring 

 and late spring. The greater part of June is spring, but 

 who would plant Roses in June, except from pots? 



121 



