158 The Rose Garden. 



with the Spring. The last operation performed in the Rose Garden has been pruning, 

 and now forking the beds over requires to be done. 



When Roses are newly planted they need a little extra attention. They should 

 be mulched and watered occasionally if the Spring or Summer prove dry. As care in 

 childhood and early life often determines the constitution of the man, so attention at 

 this epoch of a plant's existence usually establishes a vigorous and healthy subject. 

 Unless it is the intention to supply the plants with manure-water during that part of 

 the growing season which precedes their flowering, now is the time to enrich the soil. 

 If the ground has been prepared the previous autumn this will be unnecessary, but 

 under all other circumstances it should be done. The manure should be well- 

 decayed, and a thick coating laid on the beds previous to forking, that it may be 

 turned in in this operation. An annual forking is indispensable, and if the beds are 

 also hoed with a Vernon hoe three or four times in the course of the summer, as the 

 nature of the soil or the season may require, the plants will be largely benefitted. 

 The latter practice is especially recommended for stiff and adhesive soils. 



Rose-trees require a careful looking over during April and May, to remove the 

 Rose-grub, which, if allowed to pursue its ravages, proves most destructive to the 

 early bloom. Tobacco-smoke and tobacco-water seem alike inefficient ; soot-water 

 is evidently disagreeable to them, but they survive it ; and the only effectual remedy 

 I know of is to search diligently, in the early stages of the young shoots' growth, and 

 draw the vagrants from their flimsy hiding-places. I believe certain birds frequently 

 make a meal off them, but their operations are too irregular to be relied on. The 

 green-fly abounds everywhere ; syringing with tobacco-water, or dusting with snuff 

 and soot when the leaves are damp, that the mixture may adhere thereto, destroys 

 or disperses it. Where only a few trees are grown it is also a good practice to smoke 

 the trees with tobacco, using the fumigating-bellows, first enclosing the head with 

 some material that will prevent the escape of the smoke. 



In budded and grafted Roses, suckers from the stock often shoot forth, and will 

 impoverish the tree if allowed to remain. They should be watched for, and invariably 

 removed so soon as seen ; if proceeding from beneath the ground, it is necessary to 

 remove the soil, for which purpose a spade is best, and they should be cut off close 

 to the stock whence they spring. If this is strictly attended to for two or three 

 years the Dog-rose will cease to throw suckers. On the specimen plants here, 

 which are of some age, it is rare that a sucker is seen. 



At the same time that we are on the look-out for suckers, it may be well to have 

 an eye on the heads of the trees, to establish a regular growth. Besides the shoots 

 produced at stated periods in Spring, and in Summer immediately after flowering, 

 it is not unusual, when a plant is in full vigour, for buds that have lain dormant 

 even for a year or two to burst into life, producing very gross shoots. If such 

 proceed from the Summer kinds, they rarely flower, and, not ripening well, are of 



