ON THE CULTURE OF ROSES. 



299 



ther the cutting- be only an inch or a pole in length. The climb- 

 ing roses should either have a building to climb on, as a ruin, a 

 bower, a wall, a trellis, &c, or, failing these, they may readily 

 and cheaply be accommodated with a tree to climb for the small 

 outlay of one penny. This arrangement is not confined to the 

 culture of climbing roses only, but should extend to the culture 

 of climbers of all kinds ; for at the present time climbers cannot 

 be grown in gardens, from sheer want of anything to climb upon. 

 The grape-vine family, nearly all hardy, but seldom grown, pro- 

 duces the most beautiful foliage imaginable as a climber ; but, 

 alas ! for lack of the prop, we lose the service of the vine. In 

 an economical point of view the vine is worthy of a place with a 

 tall yew hedge to back it, and, thus situated, something more 

 than leaves would repay the planter. Any one who has eaten 

 grapes cooked, even when not fully ripe, will allow that they 

 are superior to any other tart-fruit, and, as they would come in 

 late in autumn, could not fail to find a welcome at table when 

 our native fruits were ripe or dead. The white bryony formed 

 an object of the greatest beauty, growing up the face of a tall 

 clipped yew hedge at Caenwood, in the kitchen-garden. This 

 plant attached itself by its tendrils to the hedge ; and, as it be- 

 longs to Cucurbits, it gives an admirable lesson to cucumber 

 growers, for it formed a perfect fan, with rays nine feet long, 

 without the aid of man. The cucumber is a plant adapted by 

 nature for a similar situation ; for its beautiful tendrils tell that 

 they were never made to crawl, but to climb. But I need not 

 go farther than to the pea for an example of the value of living 

 props : hundreds of persons would grow peas if they had sticks 

 to prop them with. I saw a neighbour with a row of peas well 

 sticked with a couple of rows of living beans, w hich by a special 

 blunder had been sowed after the peas were covered with the 

 soil. 



The cultivation of climbers is a field too great to be entered 

 upon here, and yet too important to be passed over in silence. I 

 have therefore thrown out these hints in passing, and leave it to 

 the lovers and admirers of this class of plants to carry it out, 

 resting assured that the scarlet trumpets of that splendid climber, 

 the trumpet-flowering honeysuckle, alone will proclaim by their 

 few and feeble specimens the truth of what I am endeavouring 

 to show r , namely, that for want of a prop we lose the services of 

 the most beautiful plants that could adorn a garden, ay, and the 

 services too of valuable esculents. But to return to the rose. 

 The umbrella form of trellis is well suited to show to advantage 

 certain kinds of roses. Now the dwarf or weeping elm, engrafted 

 on the common elm, forms an elegant head of this form ; and, 

 as these artificial drooping- headed trees are monsters, and grow 



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