102 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



so vigorous and was so novel in character that it 

 gave a new impetus to rose growing, and became, 

 from the garden point of view, a forerunner of the 

 splendid race of hybrid teas. It may have been 

 some five and twenty years later that Mareschal 

 Niel, strictly a noisette, and still one of the finest 

 of yellow roses, rewarded the efforts of a French 

 grower. Tea roses were from the beginning highly 

 esteemed and coveted ; but at first their delicacy 

 of constitution, which seemed inherent, bid fair 

 to preclude any thought of their fitness for general 

 cultivation out of doors. Of late years, however, 

 this difficulty has been to a great extent over- 

 come, and now hybrid perpetuals in their turn 

 are beginning to have some ado to hold their 

 own against the hardiest hybrids of the tea-scented 

 race, though, in the meantime, there is ample room 

 for both. 



The third and latest development has been in 

 the freer use of rambling roses. To this phase a 

 further impetus has been given, in quite recent 

 years, by the arrival from Japan, stowed away 

 somewhere, it is said, in a seaman's kit, of a climb- 

 ing rose of deeper tint than any of the old Ayr- 

 shire type the brilliant Crimson Rambler a name 

 which was destined in an incredibly short time 

 to become a household word. Since then a crowd 

 of rambling roses of many sorts and shades of 

 colour have followed close upon its wake, and have 

 already stamped a character all their own upon 

 the rose garden of the twentieth century. 



To those who have watched the gradual un- 

 folding of these successive changes, the effect on 



