CARE OF THE LITTLE GARDEN 93 



fancy Hydrangea •paniculaia as compared with the one just 

 mentioned), since it flowers on the new wood, the growth of 

 the current season, one may cut it back in spring or in autumn. 

 As for pruning roses, climbing roses, they also may be cut 

 back in spring, as are the bush roses, but with Ramblers an 

 excellent thing is to cut out much of the old wood after flowering. 

 This we are always intending to do, but seldom accomplish, so 

 far as my personal experience goes. It is hard work to take down 

 in simmier that network of thorny and tangled branches — so 

 discouraging to the garden's appearance while the work is in prog, 

 ress. Yet it really should be done; for, if not, those great healthy 

 new canes that rush forth with such speed, combined with all the 

 foliage of older ones, create a meaningless mass of rose-foliage 

 whose denseness is xminteresting. The rose-branch, the rose-leaf, 

 have such an extraordinarily decorative quality in themselves, that 

 it seems a pity to allow this quality to be smothered. The pruning 

 of the commonly used creeper. Clematis paniculata, may be done 

 in autunm or in spring. It is my practice to cut back this vine to 

 three feet each spring. Nothing is so ugly, so last-year's-bird's- 

 nest looking, as a mass of dusty wooden twigs of this clematis 

 masked by the new green foliage that runs like lightning over it, 

 as if the vine itself felt shame. Such drastic cutting-back has 

 never been known to kill or hurt the clematis. As for the hybrid 

 clematises, those adorable but freakish things for the garden, no 

 priming is ever needed there. Hide your shears as you look at 

 them; for too often they wither in a night, and in the morning 

 nothing remains but a blackened shriveled stem, as if fire had 

 passed that way. The fact is that these beauteous garden sub- 

 jects are the prey of some disease, control of which has never yet 

 been learned. There is much horticultural discussion on the mat- 

 ter;for itis plain to all that these are things worth rescuing. Clem- 

 atis Jackmannii will often thrive on the wall of the isolated 



