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THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



April, 1909 



Roses All Summer in Canada 



IN OTTAWA, there are five months of ice and 

 snow and a mercury that plays for weeks 

 at twenty below zero and occasionally dips to 

 thirty-five. Here also the summers are full of 

 scorching days and chilly nights — and bugs 

 galore. Still I manage to grow roses and people 

 have been kind enough to tell me that they are 

 wonderful. Nor am I the only one in this far 

 latitude who cultivates the rose. There are hun- 

 dreds of charming rose bushes in Ottawa outside 

 of my garden fence. 



And what kind of roses do I grow? General' 

 Jacqueminot, Magna Charta, Paul. Neyron, 

 Baroness Rothschild? Yes, of course. What 

 rosarian would be without these? Anyone, any- 

 where can grow the roses mentioned; they are 

 beautiful and I would not be without them, but 

 I retain them in my garden for the glory they bring 

 in June and in the autumn. With me the craze is 

 for roses every day the summer long. A garden 

 of flowerless rose bushes is an unlovely sight. 



So in my garden all summer is perpetual bloom 

 — the bloom of hybrid teas. I have not many 

 varieties, but I have the best that are suitable to 

 this climate. It gives me regret to say that, save 

 the Persian, I have not succeeded with any yellow 

 rose. However, as I cannot grow oranges or 

 bananas I don't see why I should waste time in 

 trying to grow yellow roses; oranges, bananas, and 

 yellow roses belong only to the sunny South. 



Among my roses I scarcely have a favorite. 

 In each one I see some special loveliness. Kil- 

 larney sometimes seems perfection, and yet when 

 I turn to Caroline Testout alongside, I see a lovely 



rose in truer pink. Then again Belle Siebrecht 

 shows me the truest pink of all. In the honors 

 for fragrance Killarney and La France are the 

 great rivals, still sometimes I am not sure but 

 that the magnolia scent of the virgin Kaiserin 

 does not please me most. Beside a Kaiserin I 

 have placed a Souvenir du President Carnot, and 

 often have I stood over their blooms trying to 

 decide which was superior. The Carnot with 

 its fleshy-white tints and its long perfect buds seems 

 the acme of perfection, but the soft chaste beauty 

 of the Kaiserin is unmatchable. In every rose 

 there is some special trait or some different charm. 

 But if, perchance, some cruel fate should ordain 



The Killarney rose, of exquisite pink color, rivals 

 La France in fragrance 



A fence of wire netting can be beautified by roses 

 trained over it 



that of all my roses one only should be retained 

 in my garden, I think then I would turn to Kil- 

 larney, but the tears would be in my eyes. 



Besides the roses mentioned, I have in my garden 

 Viscountess Folkestone, Madame Abel Chatenay, 

 Gruss an Teplitz, Grace Darling, Etoile de France, 

 Florence Pemberton, Frau Karl Druschki, Madame 

 Gabriel Luizet, the Cochet roses, the Philadelphia 

 and Crimson Ramblers, the climbers — Cumber- 

 land Belle, Ruby Queen, Prairie Queen,. Dorothy 

 Perkins — and the best of the hybrid perpetuals. 

 In the latter class my greatest success has been 

 with Captain Hayward, Mrs. John Laing, Charles 

 Lefebvre, Ulrich Brunner and Baroness Rothschild. 



I have had no unusual trouble with my roses. Of 

 course, every rosarian knows that you can't have 

 roses without trouble. I have yet to see the rose 

 without its bugs and caterpillars or its black-spot 

 or mildew. These things are the hoodoo of the 

 rose garden, the things that make the rosarian's 

 life miserable — if he lets them. Nor is there any 

 short, effective way to overcome these pests. The 

 only way is the hard and sure way — the watch- 

 and-work way. Here in Ottawa the notorious 

 rose bug is a rare visitation, but we have other 

 bugs as big and hungry as he, though perhaps not 

 quite as fond of arsenic or hellebore. By spraying 

 my bushes every other night with a stiff spray 

 of water from a hose I manage to keep down the 

 insect pests. Sometimes I have to use bodily force 

 to eject some particularly big and tenacious offender. 



The disease called the black-spot is not serious in 

 this locality and is ignored. Perhaps mildew is 

 the worst trouble afflicting the rose hereabouts. 

 Last year was distressfully bad in this respect and 

 I was reluctantly obliged to keep some of my rose 

 bushes almost continually covered with flowers 

 of sulphur. Sulphur applied in this way acts as 

 an effective check in the spread of the annoying 

 fungus. A rose-bush covered with sulphur is not 

 a pretty sight, but it 's better than a dead one. 



The great test for roses in this latitude is the win- 

 ter; protection for the teas and hybrid teas is an 

 absolute necessity. If a rosarian in this climate 

 can bring his hybrid teas safely through the winter 

 — and it can be done — he will have less trouble 

 with this class of roses during the growing season, 

 for their tough, leathery foliage renders them 

 peculiarly immune to attacks of insects and disease. 



After the first hard frost in November I cover 

 the rose beds with about six inches of stable manure. 

 Later on, when the leaves have fallen from the 

 stems, I bend down the branches, where practicable, 

 and peg them close to the ground. Between the 

 first and tenth of December I wrap each bush in 



straw. I remember how I shivered for hours last 

 December as I first shoveled the snow away from 

 around each rose, wrapped each bush warmly in 

 straw, and then tenderly laid them down for their 

 long night's sleep. 



Growing roses in this part of Canada is a rather 

 perilous undertaking — perilous of success. Yet 

 I and many others have succeeded. But we have 

 to work for our roses. Up here the forces of 

 nature work against the success of the rose-grower, 

 but the man with roses in his heart goes about his 

 business with tight-set lips, and by and by he gets 

 a garden of wondrous roses laughing at those same 

 nature forces. 



Ottawa. E. R. 



Pansies the Year Round 



PANSY plants blooming at midsummer, and 

 being either in bud or full flower every 

 month of the year with the exception of January 

 and February, are almost unheard-of possibilities, 

 but we succeeded in obtaining such results and 

 without a coldframe, too. 



The plants were from ordinary seed sown in the 

 spring (March ist) in the open ground. The soil 

 was rich and the plants had partial shade. They 



Pansy "faces'' by the thousand -will appear in a 

 bed containing about a dozen plants 



received frequent doses of water and liquid manure 

 to increase the size and brilliancy of the flowers. 

 No seed pods were allowed to ripen on the plants, 

 as this would have shortened the blooming season. 

 During part of the remarkably long flowering 

 period, we had only scattering bloom because the 

 plants were kept pruned in order to give the best 

 results during the cool seasons. We gave the 

 plants a protection of manure and straw from 

 December to March. 



At the end of the following May, after the plants 

 had flowered for two months and the blossoms had 

 begun to run small, we removed all branches as 

 long as eight inches, and by June 26th the plants 

 were again in full flower. The next day they were 

 picked clean and slightly pruned, but in less than 

 a week they were once more covered with flowers. 

 On July 8th, during severely hot weather, we 

 pruned again, taking off branches six inches or 

 more in length, and covering the plants with loose 

 hay to protect them from the sun. They sent up 

 buds promptly and continuously, but these were 

 nipped off in order to keep the strength of the 

 plants for fall bloom. On August 9th one plant 

 had two dozen buds. The following week the 

 plants came into full bloom, and in order to still 

 hold them in check until cool weather it was 

 necessary to prune back once again. 



The size and number of the flowers were as 

 surprising as their persistency. One, picked after 

 several hot, dry days, was seven inches in circum- 

 ference. We had only about a dozen plants, but 

 they yielded thousands of flowers. At the height 

 of the season in May, we picked 250 from three 

 plants; on June 20th, about three weeks after 

 pruning, we picked 106, and on August 22nd, 120 

 flowers and buds. Many hundreds of blossoms, 

 of which no actual count was taken, were picked 

 during the nine or ten months these little plants 

 insisted on blooming. 



New York. I. M. Angeix. 



