ROSE GARDENS 99 



out adding any manure to the surface, even liquid manure. It 

 is simply a case of digging deeply (say, three feet) and enriching the 

 soil once for all. 



But for those who cannot adapt this idea to their own gardens 

 can anything else of an encouraging nature be said? Heaven 

 knows we need encouragement, for we spend more money on roses 

 than on all other plants put together, and have mighty little to 

 show for it. The Pacific Coast, of course, can grow roses to per- 

 fection, and parts of the South can do wonders, but the North finds 

 rose culture the costliest and least satisfactory department of 

 gardening. No beginner will believe this. Every year we hear of 

 immense new rose gardens, and of amateurs who are going to make 

 roses "a life study." But ninety-nine out of a hundred drop out 

 after a few years. They love the rose just as much as ever, but 

 it costs too much to get large double roses. There are dozens of 

 other flowers that will give a better show for the money. So these 

 incipient rose specialists become plain lovers of gardens and hardy 

 plants, which is probably the best thing that could happen for 

 all concerned. 



It may be only a negative and Pharisaic satisfaction, but we 

 certainly do not sacrifice as much for mere size of flower as the 

 English do. They say we are constantly talking about "big" 

 things, but at least we do not have in our flower shows thousands 

 of individual roses, each with a stem three inches long, and 

 exhibited on "boards" in serried ranks. Of course, they have 

 informal and artistic arrangements, too, but for many years 

 the dominant idea in English flower shows has been the false 

 and degrading practice of exhibiting big individual blooms on short 

 stems. I admit that this system is absolutely necessary for the 

 study of technical perfection, but it is grossly misleading because, 



