258 



FLORA AND SYLVA. 



good free soil and the roots active in it in 

 winter and in spring, something might 

 be done in many soils to prevent eva- 

 poration by putting broken stone in the 

 lower layer of the soil, under which the 

 roots might find comfort in the heat. In 

 the driest years fields full of flints and 

 stones are less liable to suffer and are 

 often more fertile than the heavy loamy 

 land where we might expect the mois- 

 ture to remain longer. The flints and 

 stones prevent evaporation. In moun- 

 tain lands, often subject to great heats, 

 plants, and often fragile plants, are in 

 perfect health because when rooted be- 

 neath the stone they are not liable to the 

 quick evaporation that the bare earth 

 gives. In some beds being made forTea 

 Roses and Carnations this autumn I am 

 putting broken sandstone among the 

 soil of the lower layer so that the roots 

 of the Roses may in the hottest season 

 find a cool retreat ; there will be about 

 2 feet of soil above this so that the stony 

 layer will not be in the way of any plant- 

 ing, and as there are no drains from the 

 beds any water falling on them is stored 

 for spring and summer use. 



Is the plan of bare ground a sound 

 one ? It is usual to see plants stuck out 

 in the spring which do not cover the 

 ground, so that much of the surface is 

 exposed to evaporation. If we do not 

 mulch — often an ugly process — why 

 not cover the beds with little plants ? It 

 is a good and beautiful way, that of co- 

 vering the ground with two different 

 kinds of life — the surface plants as fra- 

 gile as may be. 



Many a Rose - flowerless 



No Roses. , J 11 r 1 1 



garden tells or the mistake 



made in neglecting the Rose as a flower- 

 garden plant and growing it rightly as 

 such. At the very time when the gar- 

 dens ought to be full of Tea Roses with 

 their cool, refined colours, they arebare, 

 this being mainly owing to three things: 

 the practice of grafting everything on 

 the Brier, a June-blooming thing with 

 a tendency to make everything grafted 

 on it short-blooming too ; the preference 

 for hybrid perpetual and other short- 

 blooming summer Roses; and the prac- 

 tice (told also in all books upon the Rose) 

 of growing it in a place apart and not as 

 it should be — the Queen of the Flower 

 Garden ; so that, instead of Roses massed 

 and garlanded round the flower-garden 

 ofacountry house, wehave tenderplants 

 of no effect or character likeLobelias and 

 Calceolarias, plants useless from a natu- 

 ral or artistic point of view. Although 

 trade routine is against us, there are 

 ways out of this if we would only follow 

 them, and it is to give up as far as pos- 

 sible the cultivation of all grafted Tea, 

 Bengal, and China Roses. The China 

 Rose never arrives at its true size or 

 beauty when grafted, and that is the rea- 

 son we so often see it in a cottage gar- 

 den far finer in effect than in most private 

 gardens, for the reason that the cottager 

 strikes his cuttings and gets the plants on 

 their natural roots. Bengal Roses, being 

 constant bloomers eveninto theautumn, 

 should take a part in every flower-gar- 

 den, the addition of new and beautiful 

 kinds making them more precious than 

 ever. Some of the old kinds, too, like 

 Cramoisie, are still among the fairest of 

 Roses. The Tea Roses (which are of the 

 same origin) in many cases die back after 



