324 THE BOOK OF THE ROSE chap. 



should preserve them from frost till the middle of 

 February ; and then, instead of removing the pro- 

 tection, mend it and restore it by covering any 

 cracks with more earth till April, for the very 

 opposite reason, to keep them from the heat and 

 influence of the early spring sun. I do this, not 

 only to delay the flowering that the blooms may be 

 available for exhibition, but also because the very 

 first buds to break are those of the flower-bearing 

 shoots which will be injured by cold nights, and per- 

 haps actually destroyed by late frosts. If the latter 

 calamity should occur, the plants may be flowerless 

 throughout the season, for autumnal blooms will 

 only come, as a rule, from the shoots which have 

 already flowered. When the protection is removed, 

 at such a date in April as may suit the locality and 

 the danger of frost, the plants may be slightly raised 

 again, the heads being tied to bamboos and the long 

 shoots cut back only where they have died, being 

 kept in a fairly horizontal position. 



Marechal Niel is easily forced and much grown 

 for the market, the best method of pruning and 

 training under glass to get a fine crop of these 

 splendid blooms in early spring having been de- 

 scribed on p. 108. Pruned under this system, 

 the power of growth of a well-fed Eose of this 

 variety under glass is astonishing. A gentleman — 

 Mr. Bagshawe Dixon — purchased a house in this 

 parish and with it a small greenhouse which had a 

 somewhat neglected short standard of Marechal 

 Niel in one corner. He very much enlarged the 

 glasshouse, and by my advice cut the Eose com- 

 pletely back, and then fed it highly, when it grew 

 very: strongly. In April, 1903, he cut it back again 



