98 



The Garden Magazine, April, 1920 



ism that lies back of the great 

 Rose propagation movement 

 now going on. 



ONE name stands out 

 preeminently among 

 American rosarians. E. G. 

 Hill, or "Gurney" Hill as his 

 friends hail him, has lived 

 with Roses most of his 

 seventy-odd years, and he 

 looks it! In his astonishing 

 place at Richmond, Indiana, 

 as he takes the interested 

 visitor through what seem 

 like literal forests of Roses, 

 he fits the situation. It was 

 Dean Hole who wrote, " He 

 who would have beautiful 

 Roses in his garden must 

 have beautiful Roses in his 

 heart," and no one who sees 

 Columbia, Premier, Mad. 

 Butterfly, Mary Hill and their 

 yet unnamed sisters in the 

 company of the creator of 

 these varieties can have any 

 doubt about the accuracy of 

 the statement. 



For a generation or more 

 Mr. Hill has bought and 

 tried all the Roses of all the 

 world that seemed to him 

 to have possibilities. He is 

 known and loved in England, 

 Ireland, and France among 

 the brethren of the Rose, 

 and his "scouting" has been 

 as welcome as it was keen, 

 establishment at Waltham Cross, England, not only the 

 beautiful bloom of the then just introduced Ophelia, but also 

 its possibilities, wherefore he bought all he could get of it, and 

 by his own methods and on his own high reputation put that 

 great Rose to work for the Rose-raisers of America who grow the 

 many millions of cut blooms annually demanded. 



Then he took up Ophelia as the parent of a new race of Roses. 

 With General MacArthur, Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Rich- 

 mond, Rhea Reid, Robin Hood and other good Roses very 

 much to his credit, with a ruthless dis- 

 carding of seedlings having the least lack 

 in his scale of points of perfection, he 

 had experience, standards and ideals with 

 which to use what has proved to be a 

 peculiarly potent parent in that same 

 Ophelia. With Mrs. George Shawyer it 

 gave him Columbia; with an Ophelia 

 seedling and Mrs. Charles Russell there 

 resulted Premier. In each of these two 

 notable Roses there was created a higher 

 standard of sturdiness, color, beauty of 

 form, petalage, foliage, endurance and 

 prolificacy for the greenhouse Rose 

 raisers. 



Their success has been phenomenal; an 

 inquiry of a hundred large growers pro- 

 ducing annually an average of more than 

 a million blooms each, showed that though 

 introduced only three years ago, Col- 

 umbia led all other varieties, and that 

 Premier was quite important. Columbia 

 has been awarded the Hubbard Gold 



THE RECIPIENT OF HIGHEST HONORS 

 Happily named is Columbia, the Rose that brings the medal of crown 

 ing achievement over a period of five years to Mr. "Gurney" 



In 1912 he saw in the Paul 



THE LATE JACKSON DAWSON 

 Whose work at the Arnold Arboretum 

 covered two generations and from whose 

 hands many wonderful hybrids came 



Medal by the American Rose 

 Society, marking for it the 

 highest honors. Columbia, 

 too, has broken through the 

 greenhouse glass, and, as is 

 fit and proper for her name, 

 taken place as a great gar- 

 den Rose. So this review of 

 the producers of American 

 Roses for America may fit- 

 tingly close with the story of 

 the Rose which, up to date, 

 stands first and highest 

 among all raised in our land, 

 and a proper memorial to the 

 sweet spirit and the genius of 

 the man whom we all delight 

 to honor! 



FRAGRANCE IN 

 ROSES 



From an article by Dr. Van Fleet in 

 the American Rose Annual for 1919 



AGREEABLE fragrance 

 L is one of the most 

 valued attributes of the per- 

 fect Rose, though many indis- 

 pensable species and varieties 

 do not possess it in marked 

 degree, and not a few are 

 either odorless or even dis- 

 tasteful to the sense of smell. 

 The wild Roses of North 

 Europe mostly have faint fra- 

 grance or are scentless and 

 the same may be said of our 

 Middle West and Pacific 

 Coast species, though there 

 are a few exceptions in the extreme Northwest. R. setigera, the 

 scentless Prairie Rose, is a characteristic example of the lack of 

 fragrance of the Rose species of our interior country. 



The violet-like odor of R. Banksiae may be mentioned. It is 

 faint, but it will be recognized when thousands of blooms are 

 expanded at the same time. The cinnamon odor ascribed to R. 

 cinnamomea and kindred species has never materialized in the 

 blooms or foliage of any of the plants I am familiar with. The 

 cinnamon idea is rather associated with the color of the twigs. 

 The Rose varieties used for the purpose in all the countries 

 concerned in perfume production are, 

 mostly hybrids of R. centifolia and R. 

 gallica, the former predominating where 

 quality, and the latter where quantity is 

 most highly appreciated. 



The fragrance of our garden and exhibi- 

 tion Roses, comes from the hybridization 

 of R. chinensis, a species naturally of faint 

 fragrance, with R. gallica, of Europe, giv- 

 ing rise to the deliciously scented Hybrid 

 Perpetuals of old gardens, and, by the 

 crossing of these with R. odorata, to the 

 immensely popular Hybrid Teas, some of 

 which are intensely fragrant. Tea Roses 

 themselves have their own characteristic 

 fragrance, and this blends well with heav- 

 ier centifolia odor, rising occasionally to 

 the highest pitch of pungent sweetness. 

 The blend of tea-scent with muskiness in 

 some of the dwarf Polyanthas is.agreeable, 

 but the centifolia fragrance is rarely 

 brought out in hybrids between R. multi- 

 flora and those carrying centifolia odors. 



Hill 



