BRIER ROSES 



61 



only be determined on the spot and in relation to all 

 that was near about it. It is one of the few kinds 

 of gardening that could be easily done on such poor 

 sandy soil as mine, because its hungry dryness suits 

 the companion Cistuses and also the setting of wild 

 Heaths which should be mingled with the fine grasses 

 natural to the heathy soil, while the path and planting 

 should join by a gentle and gradual passing of the one 

 into the other rather than by any hard or abrupt 

 transition. The Briers themselves will want a more 

 careful preparation of the ground ; trenching Avithout 

 any manuring will do for the Heath and grass and 

 Cistuses, but though the wild English parent of the 

 garden Briers is at home in sandy heaths, and though 

 it will just exist if planted in the poor ground, it takes 

 so long to grow that it is well to moderately enrich 

 its place with some good leaf mould and spent manure. 

 Then the Briers will grow apace, and though they make 

 but little growth the first year, they are all the time 

 working underground ; by the second year they will 

 make good promise, and by the third there should be 

 a fair show. 



The Briers are mainly the garden varieties, single 

 and double, of the Burnet Rose (B. spinosissima). 

 They are old garden plants, and though I have been 

 always collecting them, I daresay that in many a good 

 old English garden there may be more and better 

 variants than just those I have been able to get to- 

 gether. My first to bloom, within the earliest days of 



