CHAPTER XXH 



PREPARING ROSES FOR EXHIBITION 



THE hints already given, if they be diligently followed, 

 will enable the amateur gardener to achieve a full measure 

 of success, especially if his object be chiefly to produce 

 satisfactory decorative blooms. But the height of ambition is 

 not attained by a large number of growers until they have 

 exhibited at local rose shows and have gained a prize. The 

 problem : " How to prepare the blooms for exhibition ? " is 

 one that confronts them, however, and it needs a little careful 

 study and the exercise of much pains and patience if it is to be 

 solved to their own satisfaction, and more important still to the 

 satisfaction of the judges under whose severe scrutiny their 

 choicest roses will come. 



I paid a visit, towards the end of June, during a recent summer, 

 to the garden of a friend who is a very successful grower of roses 

 and a prize-winner at some of the leading shows. Needless to 

 say, he was extremely busy with his final preparations for getting 

 his exhibition blooms into perfect condition, and it occurred to 

 me that not a few of my readers whose ambitions lie in a similar 

 direction would be glad to know what those preparations 

 were. 



On Page 166 is reproduced a picture of a rose-bed in my friend's 

 garden, containing nearly three hundred trees. The picture 

 was taken on the day after more than three hundred blooms had 

 been cut, yet in spite of this wholesale thinning out there were 

 still many choice flowers. It was from these that the blooms for 

 exhibition were selected. It will be noticed that the majority 

 of them are protected by linen hoods. The object of this is to 

 preserve the expanding buds from being battered by heavy rain 



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