June 8. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
173 
j of doctrine, and others shook their heads or shrugged I 
their shoidders, as much as to say—“ So much learning j 
i lias made thee daft." It was not so, however; for when 
i I was at the Rose tents at Chiswick, the other day,-1 
took a copy of the catalogues of all the growers, and in 
I one of them, that of Mr. Francis, of Hertford, who was 
within an ace of winning the very first prize for Roses, ; 
’ this new way of dealing with old Roses is recommended; I 
\ hut what makes me refer to his catalogue more par- 
! ticularly is another recommendation which he makes, | 
and which is acted on every year by some of our best 
i practical gardeners, when they are called in to doctor 
j such and such plants. 
He says—“ With the exception of Teas and Chinas, 
I December and January are considered the best months 
; for pruning. Many sorts, such as the Hybrid Chinas, 
j Hybrid Bourbons, and some of the strongest-growing 
Noisettes and Bourbons, require very little pruning. 
About every third year they should be pruned-in close, j 
so as to make them produce new wood, and to prevent i 
the plants getting too old and ugly in appearance.” I 
never saw or heard of this in print, but nothing is more 
common in practice. An amateur gets his Roses, or 
his Oranges, or his Myrtles, or, perhaps, his Vines, out 
of all order, and the more he prunes them himself, the 
farther they got from his purpose ; at last he gets advice I 
from “one of our first-rate men,” but, unfortunately, 
this practical man belongs to the plausible or flattering 
class, and they have a knack of first finding out your . 
own private opinion upon the case in point, and theu, 
to please you, and to get the name of being so very 
clever, they give their advice so as to square with your 
own notions, without, perhaps, giving the thing a single 
thought. It is in human nature, that we should, all of 
us, think our own opinion to be the best on many things, 
and when we are thus flattered by an echo of our own 
ideas, wo think echo is a god or goddess of wisdom, and 
time only tells when we are led astray, in accordance to 
our ill-judgment, and the Roses, Oranges, or whatever 
they may be, are, after all, getting worse and worse. 
How different from the man of nerve, who cares not a 
straw whether he pleases you or not for the moment, 
if he can but put you on the right path. 
Show him your Roses, and he will tell you to your 
very face they are past hope, unless you will consent to 
do as Mr. Francis advises in his Rose Catalogue— cut \ 
them right in , and take your chance of flowers or no 
flowers the next season. If Mr. Errington were to be 
set to some Grape-walls which I could mention, the 
owner would take him, Mr. Errington, to be all but 
mad, and himself and his pruned Vines more than 
ruined; but time wouldtell. So with Mr. Fish, again; if 
all your Myrtles are very bad in looks, naked below, 
thin among the leaves, lean, lank, and leathery, the 
| bark dry, in scales, in fissures, and a host of suckers 
j offering to come up from the collar, what would he do to 
them? Why, he would cut them into the bone, and 
j before he had done with them, you never would have seen 
j such frightful objects in your life—nothing but bare 
! sticks; but time makes them what he intended,—model 
I specimens of health and beauty. And May, or very early ; 
' in June, is the right time for “ cutting-in ; ” and May is I 
the right time to dose prune , and thinning prune , and j 
j prune to renew —either one or other — almost all the 
I shrubs that flower with us in April and May, whether 
j in pots, or in the flower-garden, or pleasure-ground, 
j About the strong summer Roses, I think Mr. Francis 
i is the only authority we have in the trade for cutting 
I them close in July. “Another excellent plan,” he writes, 
| “for standard Chinas, many of the pillar Roses, and 
j standard climbers, is to prune-in quite close just after 
i they have done flowering; they will then produce new 
| shoots the same summer, and flower abundantly the 
I next season.” Of course, they and those who prune 
such Roses in the dead of winter are fighting against 
the air. The Cottage Gardener, however, did not 
contemplate, I believe, this entire “ cutting-in.” If I 
recollect rightly, he only went so far as to give a good 
general thinning, and a moderate pruning, to all the 
wood that was left, after cutting out the whole of the 
wood which had just flowered. 
Manetti Stocks.— From my own experience, I can¬ 
not say anything against this Rose for a stock; but I 
could write enough in its praise—still, I must recollect 
the disappointment I and others met with from the 
Boursault stock, which I once praised more than anyone. 
It requires four years, at least, and an indifferent soil, 
to prove any new Rose-stock. Roses will do well almost 
on any stock for the first two or three years. A gentle¬ 
man near me, who is particularly well versed in Roses, 
and who manages a large collection of his own, says 
that Pius the Ninth, is, or will make, the best stock of 
any that has yet been tried. lie is not fond of the 
Manetti, but cannot say much against it. I know, also, 
a fine bed of Oeant des Bataill.es, edged by the Mal- 
maison Rose, all on the Manetti stock, and about four 
years old. The situation is good, and the soil is not less 
so, but this spring several plants in this bed have died 
outright, and the rest arc as fine plants as one could 
wish to sec; the stock was the first part which died. I 
Now, I should very much like to hear from all parts of 
the country how this question stands in the opinion j 
and experience of private growers generally. Mr. Rivers, i 
who introduced this stock, and who first recommended 
it, has never yet found fault with it, nor said so in [ 
public, but he has been, all along, very firm the j 
other way. Mr. Paul has always stood out against 1 
it; and now, Mr. Laue is decidedly not very favourable 
to it. Mr. Jackson, my next-door friend, does not say 
much against it; still, I can easily perceive that he 
would not risk a fortune on its merits. I have been 
going to set up in the Rose way myself, ever since I saw 
the splendid pillar Roses at Bank Grove, near Kingston, 
and I have stocks of Manetti to provide me in stocks; 
but after what Mr. Lane told mo at the May Show, I 
shall not hud a single Rose on the Manetti this season, 
nor till we can learn the pros and the cons from different 
parts of the country. 
I have heard great complaints of the Manetti for 
throwing up suckers, but all the Rose-stocks in the world 
are just as liable to that as the Manetti; and it is the ! 
fault of the propagator if any Rose in existence, or ! 
any other plant, which we grow from cuttings, ever 
makes a shoot or sucker, from below, till you come to the 
main, roots ; but no one can prevent root-suckers by any 
known mode of propagation. If all the eyes arc pro¬ 
perly extracted from cuttings of one-year-old wood, ex¬ 
cept the one or two at the top for growth, even the 
Willow can never renew them, or produce others on the 
same part for ever. That took me seven long years to 
prove, and I am quite sure of the point, therefore I can¬ 
not entertain any complaints against this or that stock, 
on the score of suckers; they are only evidences of so 
much scamping work, if they do not proceed immedi¬ 
ately from the older roots; and if they do come from 
the roots, we can keep them in check, but we can never 
hinder their coming. 
Roses on their own Roots. —This is a subject on 
which my own mind has been made up for years. I 
never found out, nor could understand, how a Rose could 
he improved on roots foreign to its particular nature. 
It is only a matter of convenience from first to last. 
Roses bud so freely that it is tho easiest and cheapest 
way to increase them, and there is the beginning and 
end of the story; but see how many gold medals, worth 
from fifteen to twenty-five pounds a piece, which Mr. 
Lane pocketed from his knowing that no roots are equal 
to its own for any variety of Rose. I believe he lias 
