GARDEN ROSES. 
327 
In the days of the old Hybrid Perpetuals, in order to secure a few 
well-shaped flowers of any one variety, it was usually necessary to 
grow a good many plants, and pay strict attention to cultivation and 
careful and timely disbudding. Even ' Victor Hugo,' one of the freest 
and best, suffers from this defect. ' Frau Karl Druschki ' is the nearest 
approach to an exception in the group, the flowers being usually good 
even if not disbudded. 
The popular and beautiful ' Lady Hillingdon ' seems to me to 
depend much on the soil and situation in which it is growing. In 
my own gravelly garden a large number of the flowers produced, 
especially in late summer, are of rather poor form and quality, while 
in more generous soils the proportion of well-shaped flowers seems 
to be much larger. 
In the dwarf Polyanthas, two of the earliest of the section ' Cecile 
Brunner,' 1880, and ' Perle d'Or ' (1883) had beautifully formed little 
flowers. Later, colour seems to have monopolized the group to the 
detriment of form, which is only beginning to reappear in such Roses 
as ' Little Meg,' while in the climbing section, except in the singles, 
there is little to note but ' Emily Gray.' ' Christine Wright,' and 
occasionally * Leontine Gervais,' may remind us that it may not be 
impossible to find beauty of form even here. 
2. The carriage of the flower on the stalk is of great importance 
in considering the decorative value of a Rose in the garden. On the 
one hand, a flower that is carried bolt upright on a short stiff stalk, 
as we find in ' Florence Forrester ' and ' Mrs. George Norwood,' is 
too stiff to be pleasing, and it is readily injured by rain. On the other 
hand, the plant with a stalk too weak to support the flower, such as 
we see in 'Mrs. Foley Hobbs,' * Bessie Brown,' and usually in ' British 
Queen,' is even more objectionable. These head-hangers are of no 
value in the garden, and only useful for cutting for the exhibition 
box, where they can be supported with a wire, or when they can be 
thrust into a specimen vase to ornament the house. For the latter 
purpose resort is sometimes had to the help of a wire, the end of which 
is pushed into the calyx to keep the head upright ; but this is not to 
be commended, for the wire rapidly rusts in water and discolours the 
vase. 
For our Garden Roses we should seek a type intermediate between 
these two, with a graceful, fairly upright, but not stiff carriage ; and, 
fortunately, among our modem Roses we shall find no lack of instances. 
3. Colour is an important matter in the garden, and great progress 
in its improvement in Roses has taken place of recent years, notably 
through the efforts of Mr. McGredy and M. Fernet Ducher. There 
is no doubt that the popularity of the dwarf Polyanthas and the 
Ramblers is largely due to the mass of colour they respectively produce. 
It is almost equally important in the case of the Hybrid Teas and 
other Roses used for beds and borders. 
Two points are important : — (i) The colour should be clear, bright, 
and decided ; a good crimson, yellow, pink, or white are always valuable, 
