BRIER ROSES 



65 



Blanche de Coubert. It is quite the purest and 

 coldest white of any Rose I know, and one is so un- 

 accustomed to seeing a Rose with distinctly blue 

 shading, that the first sight of it in bloom out of 

 doors gave me a sort of pleasing shock, and an im- 

 pression as of a Rose doing something quite new. 



The common Sweet-brier and the beautiful Pen- 

 zance hybrids would have their place in the large 

 Brier garden that I like to imagine ; there would be 

 whole brakes of them in the background, some grow- 

 ing at will without support and some ramping through 

 Thorns and Hollies. 



The Scotch Briers have the great merit as garden 

 plants — a merit that scarcely any other family of 

 Roses can claim — of being in some kind of beauty 

 throughout the year ; for in autumn the Burnet Rose 

 and some of the varieties bear large black fruits that 

 are distinctly handsome, and the foliage assumes a rich 

 duskiness of smoky red-bronze ; while in winter there 

 is a pleasant warmth of colour about the dense bushy 

 masses 



When I advised the planting of the common 

 Heath {Calluna) as a groundwork of the Briers, it was 

 with no thought of its flowering, for that is not till 

 August, but for the sake of its quiet leaf-colouring ; 

 grey-green when the Briers bloom, and later of a 

 sober rustiness ; its own change of colouring keeping 

 pace with that of the small Rose bushes. In neither 



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