468 Old Time Gardens 



Among the several hundred things I have fully 

 planned out to do, to solace my old age after I have 

 become a " centurion," is a series of water-color 

 drawings of all these old-time Roses, for so many of 

 them are already scarce. 



The Michigan Rose which covered the arches in 

 Mr. Seward's garden, has clusters of deep pink, 

 single, odorless flowers, that fade out nearly white 

 after they open. It is our only native Rose that has 

 passed into cultivation. From it come many fine 

 double-flowered Roses, among them the beautiful 

 Baltimore Belle and Queen of the Prairies, which 

 were named about 1836 by a Baltimore florist called 

 Feast. All its vigorous and hardy descendants are 

 scentless save the Gem of the Prairies. It is one of 

 the ironies of plant-nomenclature when we have so 

 few plant names saved to us from the picturesque 

 and often musical speech of the American Indians, 

 that the lovely Cherokee Rose, Indian of name, is a 

 Chinese Rose. It ought to be a native, for every- 

 where throughout our Southern states its pure white 

 flowers and glossy evergreen leaves love to grow 

 till they form dense thickets. 



People who own fine gardens are nowadays un- 

 willing to plant the old " Summer Roses " which 

 bloom cheerfully in their own Rose-month and then 

 have no more blossoming till the next year ; they 

 want a Remontant Rose, which will bloom a second 

 time in the autumn, or a Perpetual Rose, which will 

 give flowers from June till cut off by the frost. But 

 these latter-named Roses are not only of fine gardens 

 but of fine gardeners ; and folk who wish the old 



