Climbing Rose on cottage porch, Surrey. 



THE SUMMER GARDEN BEAUTIFUL 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE NEW ROSE GARDEN. 



WHATEVER may be thought of the reasoning in this chapter, of one 

 fact there can be no doubt, namely, that the nobler flowers have 

 been rejected as unfit for the flower garden in our own day, and first 

 among them the Rose. Since the time when people went in for 

 patterned colour many flowers were set aside, like the Rose, the 

 Carnation, and the Lily, that did not lend themselves to flat colour ; 

 and thus we see ugly, bare, and at the same time costly gardens 

 round country houses ; and therefore I begin the summer garden 

 with the Rose, too long left out of her right place, and put in the 

 background. 



There is great loss to the flower-garden from the usual way of 

 growing the Rose as a thing apart, and its absence at present from the 

 majority of flower gardens. It is surprising to see how poor and 

 hard many places are to which the beauty of the Rose might add 

 delight, and the only compensation for all this blank is what is called 

 the rosery, which in large places is often an ugly thing with plants 

 that usually only blossom for a few weeks in summer. This idea 

 of the Rose garden arose when we had a much smaller number of 

 Roses, and a greater number of these were kinds that flowered in 

 summer mainly. The old standard Rose had something to do with 

 this separate growth of Roses, it being laid down in the books that 



