334 THE MAGAZINE Or HORTICULTURE. 



Starved, mildewed thicket. Instead of " a garden of Gul in its bloom," as 

 Byron would have called what was expected, nothing better came of the 

 experiment than what might have been found in the dirty anteroom of a 

 London bazaar. 



The house was evidently unsuited to such plants, and the borders were 

 ill contrived. No light came through the sides, although the rose is a child 

 of light ; little heat accumulated, although warmth is an essential condition 

 of health in a tender rose ; the roots were ill supplied with the moisture 

 which such plants delight in, for the sloping surface of the beds caused it 

 to run away into the sunken paths as fast as it was brought to them ; and 

 finally the roses could not breathe ; imperfect ventilation at once stifled and 

 starved plants which nature intends to be waved by every breeze, to be 

 steeped in dew, and to feed greedily upon a rapidly shifting atmosphere. 



So the house was emptied of its roses and altered into an orchard house, 

 for which it is perfectly well adapted. It now produces fruit successfully, 

 although the flowers of the rose refused to appear beneath its roof 



It chanced at this time that another wooden house stood empty near it, 

 equally unwarmed artificially, but in other respects the reverse of the or- 

 chard house. It had tall glass sides as well as a glazed ridge and furrow 

 roof; the transparent sides opened to the bottom; but the roof was fixed. 

 It had been presented to the society by Mr. Hartley, the eminent glass 

 merchant of Sunderland, as a model of a cheap greenhouse ; and a model 

 rose house it has proved itself to be. 



Within this building, on a level with the floor, several flat, brick-edged 

 beds were made, and planted with roses in 1854. As before, the sorts were 

 supplied by Messrs. Lane, Paul, and Rivers ; many of the plants were in 

 fact transferred from their former place ; and the old mode of management 

 was repeated. But this time with very different result. No more blighting 

 and ineradicable mildew ; no more shrivelled leaves, no more dwindling, 

 spindling growth. Vigor was apparent from the first ; strong wood, as clean 

 as it came from the hand of nature ; fine broad lucid leaves, with the gen- 

 erous purple tinge of health in the beginning, succeeded by the richest 

 and deepest green ; and as for flowers the bushes were loaded with all they 

 could bear. In short, success was perfect, thanks to bright light, copious 

 ventilation, accumulated sun heat, and a soil that parted with nothing which 

 it received, ezcept to the plants for which what it received was intended. 

 This was the first fruit of growing roses in a house and in soil adapted to 

 them. But the success of the first year was nothing to that of the second. 



The other day the house was piled up with gigantic roses, sweeter than 

 the sweetest of the Eastern world ; men were wheeling away barrow loads 

 of fallen petals. Devoniensis seemed to have borrowed the shape and size 

 of a Cabbage, and as to Fortune's Climbing Yellow China, its rich Nankin 

 color was actually glowing with salmon. We caused some of the largest 

 to be measured on the 3d of June. Here is the result : — 



