GARDENS OF ROSES 



sons, could be seen at its best and not as a discordant 

 note. Just how this garden was affected when these 

 bushes were out of bloom, I do not know. But, as has 

 been mentioned, the American beauty does not entirely 

 lose its flowers with June, and even if it did the bushes 

 are so powerful, the foliage so strong and unmis- 

 takably green, that, while the bed might cease to draw 

 attention, it still would not be detrimental to the 

 garden. 



The teas and hybrid tea roses hardly make large 

 enough bushes to hold the center of a garden. When 

 one is composed entirely of them, a sundial or some 

 other bit of garden furniture is often found useful to 

 give it height and dignity. 



Again, there are rose gardens that have no particular 

 center, as I once saw illustrated by a beautiful garden 

 planted in the lee of evergreen trees, from where it 

 spread out irregularly over a fine bit of turf. The beds 

 in this garden were mostly in geometrical designs, — 

 stars, crescents, rectangles, and circles, — and they were 

 planned really more for the convenience and number 

 of each kind of rose that they held than for the effect 

 of the garden as a whole. In general, however, the 

 hybrid perpetuals were kept at the back comparatively 

 near the evergreens, while the teas gradually tapered 

 the planting down to the grass. Yet, here and there, 

 tall members pushed forward to dispel the idea 

 that the garden had been laid out with any such 

 definite scheme. It had no boundary or line of demarca- 

 tion unless it were the strong bulwark of evergreens 

 well at its rear. And this garden was very beautiful. 



[219] 



