CHAPTER VII 
A Tour 
de Force. 
ROSE GARDENS AND PERGOLA 
The rose is still the most loved of all flowers. Its beauty, fragrance, 
associations, give it a place in the hearts of English people that 
no other flower can approach. It is appropriate, there- 
fore, that the national garden should show it in all its 
phases and at its best. Yet the cultivation of the rose at 
Kew is something of a tour de force. The dry, sandy soil is the very 
opposite of what it needs. The feelings of the adoring country youth 
when he saw the divine Siddons in private life regaling herself heartily 
on beefsteak and stout, or some such fare, can well be understood. 
It was Dean Hole, I think, who compared the lad’s distress with 
that of romantically-inclined people who learn for the first time what 
the rose requires to bring its flowers to perfection. The rose is, in 
fact, a gross feeder and a heavy drinker. It likes a moist, deep, 
strong soil, heavily manured. The natural soil of Kew is dry, 
shallow, and sandy. In whatever part of it roses are grown, it is 
necessary for the soil to be removed to a depth of about eighteen 
inches, and replaced by a strong, stiff loam brought from a spot 
several miles away. 
In Kew the rose has to be regarded in its botanical as well as 
its horticultural aspect. About seventy genuine species of Rosa 
are known ; they are spread widely over the northern 
hemisphere. Such of them as will succeed out-of-doors 
— and they are the great majority — are cultivated 
in borders situated between the Temperate House and the Pagoda. 
Here may be seen wold roses of many sorts — the dog-rose and sweet- 
briar of hedgerows, roses from the high Himalaya, the yellow roses 
of the Orient, roses from China, Japan, Siberia, North America, 
and the Alps of Europe. Although primarily of botanical interest, 
this collection contains many beautiful shrubs. It includes the wild 
types from which the popular garden roses have been derived after 
ioo 
Species of 
Rosa. 
