20 The Rose Garden. 



Lobel, who had a garden at Hackney, and was appointed Royal Botanist by 

 James the First, published towards the close of the sixteenth century a work entitled 

 " Plantarum seu Stirpium Icones." In this work he describes ten species of Roses. 

 Didymus Mountain, who wrote about the same time, tells us that to have Roses every 

 month you must new plant, dung, and water them often. Thomas Hyll, citizen of 

 London, published in 1 593 " The Profitable Art of Gardening," gathered, as he him- 

 self tells us, from earlier writers on the subject. In this work is a chapter (chap. 28, 

 p. 84) " Of the ordering, care, and secrets of all Roses." 



" In 1622, Sir Henry Wotton sent from Venice to the Earl of Holderness a 

 double yellow Rose of no ordinary nature, which was expected to flower every month 

 from May till almost Christmas, unless change of climate should change its 

 properties." (Johnson's " History of Gardening.") This most probably was the 

 old double yellow Rose, so notorious for refusing to unfold its blossoms in our less 

 propitious climate. With regard to its flowering from May till Christmas ! this no 

 doubt was an embellishment, to which an enthusiastic collector may be readily 

 excused for giving ear. 



Parkinson, an early English writer on Gardening and Botany, in his " Paradisi in 

 sole Paradisus terrestris," published in 1629, speaks of the "white, the red, and the 

 damask," as the most ancient in England. He enumerates twenty-four varieties, and 

 speaks of others, but does not specify their names. He figures fourteen sorts, and 

 treats in a separate chapter of the propagation of Roses by budding and by seed. 

 The red Rose of which he here speaks was no doubt the Cabbage or Damask ; and 

 the white one an old variety of ROSA ALBA. In the " Theatrum Botanicum " of the 

 same author, published in 1640, there is a chapter (chap. 26) on " Rosa sylvestris, Wild 

 Roses or Bryer bushes." Six indifferent figures are given here, and there is a long 

 dissertation on the names and medicinal virtues of Roses. This is, however, largely 

 borrowed from Theophrastus, Pliny, and preceding authors or compilers of English 

 and Foreign " Herbals." In some few old English gardens we still find trees of the 

 apple-bearing Rose occupying a conspicuous position, and whose ancient appearance 

 denotes them to have withstood the changes of many a by-gone year. Sometimes, 

 indeed, the scathing hand of time has severely marked them, and they are hastening 

 to decay.* 



In the " Herbal " by John Gerard (Edition 1633) there are three chapters on 

 ROSES I. Of Roses; 2. Of the Musk Roses; 3. Of the Wild Roses. There are 

 eighteen kinds figured, and the figures are capitally done. The first chapter opens 

 thus : " The plant of Roses though it be a shrub full of prickles, yet it had been 



* I recollect meeting with two or three of this description in the gardens of Bruce Castle, Tottenham, a few 

 years since ; they were of prodigious height and size, resembling Apple-trees more than Roses. But alas ; they 

 are no longer there. 



