144 



CULTURE OF THE ROSE. 



to him in 1845, we found him much interested with experiments in 

 fruit culture. Lane, Wood, and Paul, are esteemed very good cul- 

 tivators, and generally correct in their nomenclature. From these 

 several establishments in England and France have been imported 

 most of the varieties now existing in this country. Their trade 

 with the United States is however comparatively limited, from 

 the great risk of loss by a sea-voyage. We have frequently lost 

 in this way, two-thirds or three-quarters of an importation, to our 

 great annoyance and expense, and it is only by repeated and per- 

 severing importations that we have been able to obtain all the 

 desirable varieties. 



In the United States the culture of the Rose has-been very much 

 neglected, until within a few years. Tulips and dahlias have 

 successively been the rage, and although there has long ex- 

 isted a great variety of roses, comparatively few of them have 

 been cultivated, even in the best gardens of the United States. 

 Now the tide is turning. Dahlias are going out of repute, and 

 the Rose is resuming its ancient empire in the queendom of 

 Flora. The advent of the Bourbon and the Remontant, or Per- 

 petual classes, has no doubt materially aided this change, but it 

 is in a great part owing to the easy culture of the plant, and the 

 intrinsic merits and beauty of the flower. The taste of the hor- 

 ticultural public being thus decidedly for the Rose, a demand 

 will exist for all the information respecting soil, planting, culti- 

 vating, &c., and this information we shall endeavor to supply 

 in a simple and concise manner, avoiding as far as possible all 

 technicalities, and adapting it to the use of the cultivator of a 

 single plant in the crowded border of a city garden, or to the 

 more extended culture of a commercial establishment. 



Each cultivator has his peculiar mode of doing things, and 

 there may be those who deem the mode laid down here inferior 

 to their own. From these we should be glad to hear, and to 

 make any corrections they may suggest, where such corrections 

 appear to be founded upon true principles. In order to make our 

 work as perfect as possible, we have not hesitated to add to our 

 own experience, all the information derived from a personal in- 



