2 28 The Wild Garden 



them for their beauty. Botanic gardens might well 



show us such fine famihes as these, instead of 



rivalling the pastry-cook ' bedding ' of the private 



gardener, and I do not remember ever seeing any 



attempt to grow them except in the Cambridge 

 Botanic Garden, the curator of which writes as 

 follows of our wild roses. 



'We all allow the Roses of the florist to be without rival 

 among flowers of the garden, and we can but admit that wild 

 Roses are perhaps the most lovely flowers of the field. But 

 there are numbers of the wildings, and all beautiful, and some 

 of surpassing charm. We want to see them more often 

 grown in our gardens. Sometimes we admire a chance seed- 

 ling, as, for instance, in the Cambridge Botanic Garden, 

 where some years ago R. dumalis (a form of the Dog Rose) 

 took possession of a Spruce Fir, and now attains to a height 

 of about twenty feet, forming wreaths of blossom in summer. 

 The Spruce is dead, but the Rose still clings to the old stem, 

 which forms just the right kind of support. Such an object 

 as this, or Rosa arvensis, in the collection, makes us wonder 

 why these single Roses have not received more attention. 

 They are usually so robust, just what is wanted for pleasure 

 grounds and the wild garden, and then in autumn we fre- 

 quently have their brilliant red fruit. At this moment in 

 some of the hedges of the neighbourhood are shrubs with 

 quantities of fruit, which in a garden would help consider- 

 ably in colour effect. 



' To show what material there is, I may mention that the 

 many forms of our native roses fall under seven distinct 

 aggregate groups. 



'We have first the well-known Scotch or Burnet Rose 

 (R. spinosissima), lovely with white or pink flowers ; next, 



