292 The American Flower Garden 



factor of success with roses across the sea, but by a selection of 

 varieties adapted to our hotter and colder and drier climate, and 

 by a more intelligent care of them, we, too, may have roses of 

 surpassing loveliness. 



Ideals change from generation to generation, even in rose 

 culture. We all know some old-fashioned rosarian who cuts for 

 only a brief season hundreds of roses a day mostly deep pink 

 ones, shaped like cabbages and with finger-length stems lest a 

 bud be sacrificed which he conscientiously distributes among 

 surfeited, embarrassed neighbours, and sends to the nearest hospital 

 where the patients risk an epidemic of rose cold every June. Then 

 the meteoric shower of his roses ends for a year. If we were now 

 obliged to grow bushes for eleven months to secure roses in the 

 twelfth only, and then to have a surfeit of riches that would enslave 

 us until their prodigality suddenly ceased, rose culture would 

 have little foundation in reason, and would be confined to the 

 ultra-enthusiasts popularly called cranks. Comparatively few 

 devotees are now content to expend all their energies upon the 

 hybrid "perpetuals" (woefully miscalled) that were once almost 

 exclusively grown. Looking to the Orient as well as to Europe 

 for our roses, the present-day amateur is satisfied with nothing 

 less than roses every day from May until November under the 

 open sky in the latitude of New York, and for a longer season 

 south of it. Since 1893, when the Wichuraiana rose was intro- 

 duced from Japan by Mr. Jackson Dawson, of the Arnold Arbore- 

 tum, since the Japanese rugosa rose came to bless us, and vigor- 

 ous constitutions and floriferous character were supplied to the 

 crosses with perpetual and tea stock, our gardens have been won- 

 drously enriched. Too long we looked to Europe exclusively 

 for roses, as we did for evergreens and much other garden material 



