THE KOSE AND ITS CULTURE. 



317 



individual flowers are often provided with local 

 shading of a denser character for show and other 

 purposes. 



Shelters. — These are so closely related to shade 

 that one contrivance mostly serves for both. Some 

 amount of shelter, either natural or artificial, is 

 almost essential for Eoses. Neither their leaves 

 nor flowers are moulded in such forms, nor cast of 

 such hard materials, as to fit them to withstand the 

 battle of the breeze frequently repeated. Hence it 

 is downright cruelty to Roses to plant them in the 

 teeth of the wind, blow from what quarter it may. 



It is a painful sight to mark the distressed, bruised, 

 ruined appearance of the ragged regiments of Rose- 

 trees after such ill-matched encounters. Shelters 

 must be posted round our sites to prevent such 

 wreck and ruin. 



In many places naturally sheltered spots may be 

 found for Roses. In all, some may be formed. 

 INIounds of earth, crowned with shrubs or trees, or 

 with dwarfer gi-owths, are among the cheapest, most 

 ornamental, and natural-looking of all shelters. 

 Walls or fences from six to ten feet high are the 

 next best. WaUs are expensive, but then the sur- 

 face may be clothed with Roses or fruit-trees, both of 

 which have an economical as well as an artistic and 

 aesthetic value. 



Fences, or hedges, are not so expensive. These 

 may be formed of Roses, Beech, Maple, Hornbeam, 

 Holly, Laurel, Yew, Evergreen Oak, Arborvitae, 

 Cupressus, Scotch or Spruce Fir, or other quick- 



growing dense evergreens, or rapid-growing shrubs 

 or trees ; Box, where it grows rapidly, being 

 one of the best, as well as the more robust and 

 choicer species and varieties of Rhododendrons. 

 Any of these placed at proper distances, and planted 

 in or grown into considerable mass, would provide 

 sufficient shelter without an atom of overhanging 

 shadow. It is by no means necessary that these 

 shelters should take the form of straight lines, or 

 formal hedges. On the contrary, their efficacy, as 

 well as their beauty, would be greatly augmented 

 were the outside, at least, to swell out into bold 

 projections here, and recede there, and so on all 



9 



round, thus fringing the rosary about vdth. a band, 

 of verdure and warmth, the shelter being made 

 thickest where the prevailing winds were the most 

 fierce and frequent. Such living shelters would 

 break or sift out the force from the fiercest winds 

 on their passage through, so that by the time they 

 reached the Roses, they would be unable to bruise 

 a leaf, or tarnish the most delicate flower. 



As the tops of our living shelters must on no 

 account overshadow the Rose-trees, and rob them of 

 their due quota of light, dew, or rain, so neither 

 must their roots be allowed to burrow under the 

 beds, and thus empty their larders of food. The 

 old saying that roots and tops run a neck-and-neck 

 race, each keeping abreast, and both covering the 

 same distance, has much truth in it. But in the 

 near proximity of the many rich and good things 

 put into Rose-beds, the roots will be found far to 

 outstrip the tops of many trees, and to have stolen 



rig'. 25.— EosE Garden for a Kising Slope. 



