THE GARDEN 



the first year's bloom when on the Ma- 

 netti or the Brier stock. A few kinds do 

 well but the majority perish or dwindle 

 because thereis an antagonism in season 

 or growth between our native Brier and 

 the Indian Rose from which these come. 

 The hybrid Teas are also very beautiful, 

 there being no hard and fast line between 

 themandtheTeas. Anotheramendment 

 in practice would be to abolish the un- 

 clean and needless custom of mulching 

 heavily with manure. This year I went 

 to see the garden of a lady who had told 

 me she had made a garden of Tea Roses. 

 I found about six half-grown blooms on 

 little starveling bushes and all the beds 

 plastered over with 2 or 3 inches of raw 

 manure. This way is needless and per- 

 nicious. To nourish the plants the best 

 time is when preparing the beds, and in 

 thecase of Roses on their own roots not 

 to use the heavy soil advised in all the 

 books upon rose culture. We have to 

 fight against not only the trade routine 

 of putting every Rose on the Brier, but 

 also the thousand-times-repeated and 

 false teaching that Roses will only thrive 

 in heavy clayed soils. So long as we grow 

 the Brier in flower-gardens it must have 

 the heavy and rank soil it seeks. This is 

 written on the 25 th of July in the off- 

 season of Roses, that is to say, between 

 the earlyautumn and the summer bloom, 

 and we have thousands of the most beau- 

 tiful known Roses in flower, while too 

 many gardens are bare. These plants give 

 far finer, more varied, and interesting 

 colour than any bedding plants. 



If the Rose be the queen she 



Absentees. haS lovel 7 maids ° f honour 



in the Clematis of the Chi- 



BEAUTIFUL 259 



nese, Japanese, and European kinds. 

 These endure the heat of the southern 

 counties without suffering, and for their 

 fine colour and unrivalled grace we can- 

 not do without them. Unhappily their 

 usefulness is marred by the nursery sys- 

 tem of grafting which leads to their 

 death, so that in many gardens they are 

 not seen in agood state. In old nurseries 

 they are layered, but in the modern 

 nursery the cheaper and easier way of 

 graftingupon some rapid -growing stock 

 is practised, resulting in a coarse growth 

 the first year, but afterwards leading to 

 the death of the plant. This is a serious 

 loss, and our experience is that it can 

 be avoided by getting plants on their 

 own roots. There are three ways of en- 

 joying the Clematis: (1) plants of the 

 larger kinds from layers; (2) seedlings 

 of the same race and therefore on natural 

 roots; (3) the growth of the Clematis 

 of the Viticella race and other small 

 wild kinds, good in colour and in habit, 

 and profuse in flower, garlanding trellis- 

 work or pergola, and running freely 

 over shrubs. Some kinds of the Viticella 

 group raised by M. Morel of Lyons are 

 varied and pretty in colour. All these, 

 when grafted, are grafted upon their 

 mother-plant (i.e., the wild C. Viticella) 



\ which ensures a better union, whereas 

 if a Clematis be grafted on a stock of a 



I different origin and nature we may ex- 

 pect trouble. Honeysuckles are a pre- 

 cious group of plants, but, owing to the 

 present ideas of what the flower-garden 



I set before or near a house should be, they 



\ are excluded as a matter of course. After 

 theRose and Clematis the noblest flower 

 of summer is the Carnation. Not the ex- 



R 2 



