io6 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



doubt that tea roses, in particular, do flourish ex- 

 ceedingly in warmer latitudes than our own. In 

 no country could they be more rampant than in 

 those regions of Cape Colony, for example, which 

 are blessed with summer showers as well as winter 

 rains. Even in the higher belt of country, before 

 reaching the dry plains of the Karroo, where rain 

 falls only during late autumn and winter, and farms 

 and gardens depend entirely upon irrigation for the 

 rest of the year, tea roses are grown to such per- 

 fection as to be the envy of all British rose-lovers 

 whose eyes are privileged to rest upon them. I 

 recall with intense pleasure the thickets of bushes 

 almost hidden beneath the veil of myriads of roses, 

 suggesting the fabled groves of enchanted flowers 

 which concealed with their tangle the sleeping 

 beauty of the old story. But there is one draw- 

 back, the heat of midsummer quickly makes them 

 droop and fade, and thus their charm is more fleet- 

 ing than under our cool skies, so often veiled by 

 cloud and mist even in summer. Thus, there are 

 always compensations, and in spite of some limit- 

 ations, we can scarcely complain of the possibilities 

 we have in our own English gardens. 



One phase of rose growing is very significant of 

 the awakening of a truer sense of beauty in form. 

 Single roses are now grown by scores where, for- 

 merly, they would have been discarded as of little 

 worth. There are three single roses in my own 

 garden which I would not willingly be without. 

 The first opens its earliest buds by the end of 

 May. Its wide rose-pink flowers, with bosses of 

 golden "threds," poise like butterflies above the 



