ROSES 



by other means than that of roses. Let him plant a 

 clump of Lilac or Laburnum or red-flowered May or 

 Azalea and Rhododendron, then, as the years pass, 

 shall he rejoice to his heart's content in an excess of 

 pleasure, such as the contemplation of a gorgeous 

 picture gives. One must, of course, give due praise to 

 such luxuriant blossoming climbers as Dorothy Perkins, 

 Lady Gay, Crimson Rambler, Hiawatha, and a few 

 others, for their inimitable flower display, but only 

 when they are massed in scores can their show compare 

 in luxuriance with that of some of the commonest 

 flowering trees and shrubs. It is in their favour that 

 they come to full flowerhood more quickly. Even 

 when this admission is made it remains, so it seems to 

 me, that he who plants roses solely that his garden shall 

 be a blaze of colour plants as a Philistine, and would be 

 better suited by red Geraniums. 



Think of the Rhododendron Dell at Kew, a long dip 

 in the garden ground, in the bed of which flows a seduc- 

 tive, winding path ; on either side it is flanked by huge 

 bushes that in early summer lose their leaves in an 

 ecstasy of bloom. To right and left, down low, and on 

 high to where the tender green of the encircling trees 

 droops to caress them one incomparable blaze of colour, 

 in shades that are clear and bright, in brilliant shades 

 and those that are bizarre and even in themselves dis- 

 pleasing. But the onlooker is so enraptured with the 

 gorgeous colouring of the mass that isolated instances of 



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