The Garden Magazine, August, 1920 
373 
eral character. If hardy Rose seedlings are grown all coddling 
after the early stages should be avoided. Give good attention 
and fair wholesome cultivation, but avoid too great anxiety to 
preserve the weaklings. Frost, drought, and disease, within 
reasonable limits, should be allowed to take their toll, as only the 
inherently vigorous individuals should survive. The preserva- 
tion of weak-growing varieties, be they never so attractive, is 
the bane of Rose culture. Good, healthy, free-growing and 
profuse-blooming novelties, and an occasional exception of strik- 
ing character, needing the minimum of care in after culture will 
be raised in the future as in the past, if only abundance of seed- 
lings are grown from superior parents. 
A VISIT TO THE ROSE FACTORY 
j. Horace McFarland 
?C T WILL be noted that 1 do not write of a Rose factory, 
but definitely of the Rose factory. A number of Rose- 
wHof* workers are now hybridizing Roses in and for America, 
and I do not minify the worth of their efforts and their 
results when 1 refer to Dr. Van Fleet’s establishment at Bell 
station, in the wilderness between Baltimore and Washington, 
as the one place where the most effort and the broadest effort is 
proceeding to produce better Roses, or rather better outdoor 
Roses, for American door-yards. 
Other hybridizers are seeking continually for size, color, and 
commercial quality in that special field which flourishes under 
glass and markets a cut product. Captain Thomas is breeding 
broadly and intelligently toward the eventual hardy everbloom- 
ing climbing Rose with initial successes, and some casual rosarians 
are adventuring in climbers by conventional crosses. 
But Dr. Van Fleet, with the wide reach of the Federal Depart- 
ment of Agriculture back of him, with command of the native 
forms of all the world, with long years of experience and the 
patience bred of many efforts, and most of all with that uncanny 
sixth sense of feeling for what he cannot see, is uniquely working 
all the time, every day — and long days of non-union hours at 
that! — toward his goal of the Rose that will take its place with 
the Lilac and the Hydrangea as a hard-luck shrub, found in 
every bit of ground near a home that has room for a single plant. 
NOT THE CONVENTIONAL IDEA OF A ROSE BUSH 
Rosa Hugonis is a flowery shrub of unusual merit, giving its clear yellow blooms in the earliest 
spring and in rich luxuriousness. One of the new and perfectly hardy plants from Western China 
