the size of a pea we watered with manure water, 1^2 bushels to the 
barrel, using a large dipper full to each plant and taking care to 
water between the plants so as not to burn them. We chose a cloudy 
day for this and we repeated it in ten days. 
We have enough plants to grow for quality not quantity. When 
the buds are first formed, we pinch off all but the centre bud, and 
allow all the strength of the plant to go to that, making perhaps not 
so much color in the garden, but more perfect individual specimens. 
During July and August, we disbudded and forced our plants to 
put this strength back to the roots again. We repeated the stable 
litter mulch in July and worked it in again after raking off the straw 
in September. The last of August we watered again with weak 
manure water xyi bushels to the barrel and repeated it every ten days 
for four times. We have cut roses as late as December fourth, little 
tight buds, which half opened in the house. 
Greatest care and judgment are needed in cutting roses. We are 
made very happy by Admiral and Mrs. Ward's interest in our garden, 
and when I saw Admiral Ward and our gardener, Johnson, argue for 
ten minutes over the way one stem should be cut, I realized that the 
general directions which Johnson had given me of leaving two eyes, 
the top of which should be an outside one, needed some amplification. 
This can better be illustrated, however, in the garden than on paper. 
If I were to dedicate these very elementary facts about rose 
growing, I should inscribe them to our gardener, Frank O. Johnson, 
who has been most patient with me in my efforts to learn the alphabet 
of rose growing. Admiral Ward, who, Johnson says, knows more 
about roses than any man he knows, excepting, perhaps, Mr. A. N. 
Pierson of Cromwell, Conn., in whose employ Johnson was for fifteen 
years before he came to us, is kind enough to be interested in Johnson's 
theories. It is Admiral Ward's enthusiasm which prompts me to ask 
your consideration of them. I have followed Johnson like faithful 
Fido for many years and his theories have become my theories. In 
some ways he has deferred to me for he has granted my desire to grow 
roses 12 inches apart and has grown good roses on terraces with grass 
backing, an impossible formula, I was told, by one who thought he 
knew, when I told him my plan for my new rose garden. 
I assure you that the methods of rose growing are full of interest 
and I beg those of you who only know and love the finished product 
to go back to Mother Earth and conjure with her to grow that queen 
of flowers, the Hybrid Tea. 
Harriet Barnes Pratt, 
(Mrs. Harold I. Pratt) North Country Garden Club. 
