300 The American Flower Garden 



edge and two feet apart; but an exception to the rule is the Gruss 

 an Teplitz, for example, which quickly attains the size of a bush 

 requiring a bed made on a more generous scale. Kaiserin Augusta 

 Victoria, lovely creature, is a buxom beauty, vigorous and free. 

 She, too, needs plenty of room to display her immaculate charms. 

 Many rosarians set out pansies, English daisies, alyssum, migno- 

 nette or other low-growing plants between the roses to carpet the 

 earth with bloom. 



When buying roses, the general rule holds good : it is economy 

 in the end to get only the best quality of stock from the most 

 reliable dealer. The market is flooded with roses alleged to be 

 cheap, but in reality they are very small, weak, inferior plants, not 

 really worth half what is asked for them. A dozen such would 

 not furnish the real joy contained in one large, healthy, super- 

 latively fine plant that one need not sit up nights to coddle. Gener- 

 ally it is best to buy roses that have been budded on the vigorous 

 Manetti stock. The brier stock, so popular in England, is not so 

 well suited to our dryer, hotter climate. Only a few roses Caro- 

 line Testout, Ulrich Brunner and Magna Charta among them- 

 do so well on their own roots. Always plant the rose deep enough 

 for the point where the bud was inserted to be well covered with 

 soil with a good three inches of it otherwise Manetti suckers 

 may develop. These wild shoots may be detected at once by the 

 seven serrated leaflets instead of five to the leaf, and the minute 

 prickles on the stem. Remove the earth around the shoot down 

 to where it leaves the stock, pare it off close and so discourage any 

 rare attempt that may be made to revert to the wild. 



When the plants arrive from the dealer in the spring, as soon 

 as severe frost is over, lay them flat in a hole and cover them entirely 

 with soil for a day or two if they look shrivelled from long travel, 



