JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. [Mayia.uar. 
If the beginner propose to grow Tea Roses out of doors in the 
north, he must give up all idea of standards, and procure some dwarf 
plants on the Briar. These should be planted in raised beds, such 
beds as described in a former paper, but the soil should be light, 
and old manure to the extent of one-third of the whole should be 
added. Peat and leaf soil, gravel, sand, and charcoal, or all the 
latter three, should also be mixed in, to insure thorough drainage, 
and to keep the soil porous. Water lodging about the roots of 
Tea Roses is pretty sure to finish them off. In these beds the 
Roses should be planted ; if from the open ground, in the early 
autumn ; but if pot plants are procured, these should be planted 
out in May, which enables them to become established in the ground 
before the following winter. In the late autumn the soil should be 
drawn up round the bases of the plants, and a good thick layer of 
dead leaves strewed over the surface of the bed. The branches of 
the plants should be tied together, and dried fern or hay should be 
fastened round them. With these precautions Tea Roses will 
generally live through hard winters. In the spring, after the frosts 
have ceased, the soil may be drawn away—there need be no hurry 
about this —and the shoots cut back to the base just as advised for 
H.P.’s. This cutting back, or hard pruning, answers well with all 
the dwarf-growing Teas, but the Gloire de Dijon section, and other 
rampant growers, will not bloom if cut so closely. The branches 
of these must be fully protected, and they must be treated on the 
long-pruning system. These are best grown on walls, and can be 
protected by means of mats hung over them. In the open, the best 
plan is to drive in three strong stakes round each plant, and to tie 
the mat round these. 
Autumn is the real season to enjoy Tea Roses in the open. 
When the H.P.’s have bloomed and are past we shall find the Tea 
Roses still covered with buds. But we require fine dry weather to 
enjoy them. After a few cold damp nights we find the outside 
petals of the blooms stuck together and decaying, and a few such 
nights, or a wet day, sees the destruction of many beautiful flowers. 
The falling temperature, and the dead leaves from the trees around, 
tell us only too plainly that winter is near. But arrived here, some 
beginner may say, “ Why not grow Teas in pots plunged in beds 
outside, and when winter approaches take them up, put them under 
glass, and keep the wet from damaging the blooms ? ” This is a 
plan that may be followed where one has a house, or even frames 
for the purpose. 
TEA ROSES UNDER GLASS. 
There is no doubt that in this very bleak part of Her Majesty’s 
dominions the best place to get the full value out of our Tea Roses 
is under glass. Here we can prevent the winter frosts from killing 
the branches back to the base, and here we can avail ourselves, to 
the fullest extent, of the advantages the Tea Rose gives us in 
growing and blooming very nearly always. I have heard it main¬ 
tained that the plants can be kept growing and blooming all the 
year round, but my experience is against that ; still I believe that 
the Tea Rose can be made to bloom—without injury to the plant, I 
mean—for a much longer period during each year than the H.P.’s ; 
what I mean to say, to put it more clearly, is, that a Tea Rose may 
be made to start growing, and to bloom, then to rest, and to bloom 
again much quicker than is the case with an H.P. In addition, the 
Tea Rose will thrive and make a fine plant in this way under such 
treatment as would utterly ruin an H.P. A gardener I had once 
tried the continuous system in this way. We had a lot of Tea 
Roses in pots which had been growing and blooming all through 
the spring and summer under glass. These should have been dried 
off and allowed to go to rest to ripen the wood in the ordinary 
course during the autumn, but he, being anxious to get some fine 
flowers in the early spring, as he thought, kept them growing and 
flowering up to Christmas. The flowers, of course, became smaller 
and more puny as time passed, and I need hardly say that the 
spring flowering was a complete failure. I am firmly of opinion 
that all plants require to have their proper amount of rest, and 
they cannot be made to do without it. You may grow on a 
Niphetos—I mention this Rose as being the best for the purpose 
that I know of—and get a crop or two of flowers from it, then rest 
it for a few weeks, then start it off again and get another crop of 
flowers, and so on for several crops, but at last it becomes necessary 
to let the plant stop and have a real downright rest of some 
duration, the longer the better. If a plant be run too hard there 
can be only one result, it must have an extra long rest, and even 
then it may be permanently damaged. If we have a nice house 
full of Tea Roses, we may fairly expect to have flowers nearly all 
the year round with a little management. 
There are two ways of growing Tea Roses under glass—in pots 
and planted out. There are also two makeshift methods ; these : 
are frames, and glass copings or other coverings for walls, against 
which the Roses are to be grown in a similar manner to the way in 
which fruit trees are. 
TEA ROSES IN POTS. 
These may be potted in the same way as advised for H.P.’s, but 
the soil should be lighter. The composition of it might be the 
same as that recommended for the H.P.’s, except that more sand 
and charcoal should be added, so that there should be no chance of 
the pots becoming at all water-logged. 
In a young state Tea Roses do not require pruning to anything 
like the same extent as H.P.’s. A young Tea Rose puts up one 
shoot from the bud at first. This shoot generally carries a flower 
bud, and in course of time, after flowering, the plant breaks from 
the base and sends up other shoots from there, and this it will keep 
on doing while ever there is any life or vigour left in it. If the 
plant appears to be getting long and leggy in the single shoot 
stage, and there is no appearance of a bloom bud, the point of the 
shoot should be pinched out, which will cause the plant to throw 
out side shoots very quickly. If the plant be one of the strong¬ 
growing kinds, the first shoot will not often bear a bud, but will 
grow on and form a very long single stem. In this case I advise 
that the point of the first shoot should be taken out while the 
plant is very small, which will result in our having three or more 
shoots of moderate length at the end of the season, instead of one 
very long one. Where we have space, or a long length of roof, the 
shoot might be allowed to grow to its full length unstopped, when 
by bending it down horizontally the following season every bud 
would break and a fine show of flowers be the result. In the case 
of these large-growing varieties, if it be desired to grow them in 
pots, a good plan is to train the shoots round upright sticks stuck 
into the pots, but personally I prefer to see them climbing up 
pillars or wandering over the roof of the house. In repotting the 
smaller growers, great care must be taken not to overpot them. If 
the roots do not take quick possession of the soil it is apt to 
become sour, and then the plant cannot thrive. 
Where Roses are grown—either in pots or otherwise—under 
glass, or in positions where the frost does not affect them, I think 
the old wood may be allowed to remain longer than I have advised 
for plants in the open. I have an old pot plant of that lovely 
variety Caroline Kuster, and some of the wood is certainly more 
than two years old, but nevertheless it gives me fine blooms, and 
lots of them (of course I keep cutting out the oldest wood occasion¬ 
ally, allowing new ta take its place). 
At one time I repotted all my Tea and other Roses once a year, 
whether they wanted it or not, and I think now that that is the 
reason why I never really succeeded with them in those days. If 
we give a plant a lot of new soil and manure to root into, it 
grows beautifully and makes nice long shoots ; but I take it this is 
not exactly what we want from pot Roses, we look more for blooms. 
The best way to get these is not to allow so much wood to be made, 
but to turn it into bloom. This can be done by allowing the plants 
to become potbound, and only repotting them when it is absolutely 
necessary. Where the pots are full of roots, other things being 
attended to, we may look for fine flowers in quantity. I do not 
think it wise to cramp young plants in very small pots ; if we do 
so they can never become large specimens, but I am of opinion that 
8 or 9-inch pots are quite large enough for fair-sized plants. 
There is one great advantage in having our Tea Roses under 
glass in pots, and that is, that we can put them all outside in 
autumn to ripen the wood. This ripening is most necessary if we 
desire success, and though we open doors and windows to the fullest 
extent, the plants cannot get the benefit of the night dews, and the 
hard weather generally, if they are planted permanently in inside 
borders. As I wish to avoid repetition, I shall defer the remarks 
on the general treatment of Tea Roses in pots to the paper on 
“ Forcing and Growing Roses under Glass.” 
Tea Roses planted out under glass are in a much better position 
for taking care of themselves than when they are in pots. The 
growth of the plants is more luxuriant, and they are larger, and 
when thoroughly established give a greater quantity of blooms. It 
is no uncommon thing for a Marechal Niel to favour the owner 
with a thousand blooms in a single season, and these come generally 
all at once, or nearly so. When Marechal Niel begins to give 
blooms at intervals during the year, there is likely to be a screw 
loose somewhere, depend upon it. He would be a very sanguine 
individual indeed who would expect to get anything like this result 
from a plant in a pot. In a large house beds might be constructed 
on the level, about 2 feet deep, edged with brickwork. The hot- 
water pipes could be arranged to run along the edges of these beds. 
In these beds the Roses might be planted out, and in such a position 
as this the central plants might be standards, with smaller growers 
in the front rows. Where Tea Roses are planted out the greatest 
care must be exercised in the draining. I know from personal 
experience that they wi'l not thrive permanently unless the water 
can get clear away. They may do well for a time where the beds 
are newly made up, but as the earth settles and chokes the drainage, 
