ON ROSES 329 



cross each other. It is hardly practicable to treat wall 

 Roses on this plan, as there is rarely a sufficient supply 

 of new wood to re-clothe the space, and to cut out the 

 old canes at the base would be to leave the whole wall 

 bare for a considerable time. Nearly all the summer 

 growth will be from the upper branches, not from the 

 root-stock, and this considerably modifies the annual 

 pruning. If an area of wall near the ground is to be 

 covered, the plant may be trained with three or four main 

 shoots tied in two or three feet apart ; the side shoots 

 which break from these will be the flowering shoots, and 

 can be treated like the dwarf plants, being pruned back 

 in spring, so that a fresh supply of young wood is secured 

 every year. If the upper part of a house wall is to be 

 covered, the plant may be trained up with one tall stem 

 past the lower windows, and three or four main shoots 

 taken from it. Strong-growing wall Roses, such as 

 Gloire de Dijon and William Allen Richardson, will 

 need a good deal of thinning annually if they are to be 

 kept neat. I once had a " William Allen " on an east 

 wall in deep clay soil, and the growth it made every year 

 was prodigious. Alister Stella Gray, Bardou Job, and 

 other modern varieties are not so rampant. 



Propagation (a) by budding; (b) by cutting. When 

 amateur Rose-growers hear that the beautiful new 

 varieties which they see with gold medal cards attached 

 at the shows are seedlings, they may wonder whether it 

 is not equally open to them to raise good Roses from 

 seed. I am afraid it is not. It is true that new varieties 

 are raised from seed, but it is also true that they are 

 raised from a special strain of seed, impossible to buy, 

 and, even so, that they merely represent one or two 

 selections from many hundreds of plants. We must 

 look to purchase of plants as our first source of supply, 



