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FORCING ROSES. 
© 
To force roses well, that is, so as to retain their most beautiful green leaves in 
rich verdure — and how enchanting that verdure when fresh and clean ! — is one of 
the finest arts of the gardener. During the last twenty years the rose, as respects 
varieties, has been multiplied exceedingly, particularly in specimens of hybrid China. 
There are hundreds of these exceedingly beautiful, but their beauty of flower and 
foliage is of a peculiar character, while such is their hardihood that they require little 
more than shelter under glass, with plenty of well-regulated air and light. 
The varieties allied to the common Provence, red Provence, and the moss roses, 
can never be rivalled, and to such, attention will be directed, while referring to an 
article by a late most eminent horticulturist, and which has been lost sight of or 
overlooked. 
Great improvements — some of the very greatest — have been effected by amateur 
gentlemen. To mention the late Mr. Knight were but to reiterate what every one 
acknowledges. R. A. Salisbury, Esq., F.R.S., &c., &c., was another of those eminent 
persons to whom we may safely look as improvers of an art which extends itself in 
every direction, and now produces thousands of beautiful specimens, the least sur- 
passing the very finest that our forefathers could have hoped to discover as a rarity 
even in the finest collections. 
We have seen great numbers of tender-leaved roses flourishing in pits excavated 
below the ground level, without any defect of foliage, clean, and free from that pest 
of the tribe, Aphis JRoscb ; but Mr. Salisbury adopted a mode of treatment quite at 
variance with the one thus slightly mentioned. He found that the most successful 
method to obtain roses in great perfection during the winter, was one which his own 
experience had confirmed. It may be rendered perfectly intelligible, and of easy 
adoption, at a very moderate expense, by the following description. 
About the end of October, or beginning of November, choose strong suckers of any 
of the best moss or plain Provence roses, of which we have now many that the writer 
was ignorant of. To these may be added the damask, York and Lancaster variegated, 
maiden’s blush, white hip, and others of similar habits. Retain, without mutilation, 
every fibre that can be traced, and this can only be effectually done by digging up 
the parent bushes. Plant each sucker in a pot about four inches diameter at the 
top, (a good 48 size,) and mark it with a name and number on the pot, with paint, 
so as not to be mistaken. The soil recommended is invariably hazel loam, two 
thirds, and vegetable mould, one third. By the former is meant that smooth velvety 
earth so much prized by gardeners, unctuous in texture, not binding, but compressible 
without contracting into a hard, cracky substance, after being wetted. The turfy 
sods of a common, thoroughly heated over burning wood, and thereby impregnated 
with a carbonous matter from the smoke, while they are freed from grubs and vermin, 
VOL. XIII. NO CXLVI. F 
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