THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
November 20. 
i 12 
on a somewhat different footing, may one day form a 
chapter by itself. R. Errington. 
P.S. 8. N. V. and Moores Victory. —Like you 1 
must lament the loss of some of our old and favourite 
Geraniums, many of which would doubtless still he a 
boon if restored. The floral public is highly indebted 
to Mr. Beaton for bringing so many of these good 
things once more before the public. There is the 
Rouge et noir ; I remember well receiving my first plant 
of it in 1829, from Dennis, (I think) in the Iving’s-road ; 
and with it came an excellent kind, named Querci- 
folium superbum, much after the manner of your Moores 
Victory, which must, no doubt, exist somewhere: it 
was too good to be entirely rejected. Then the old 
Ignescens of Sir R. Hoare: what a gay figure have I 
known a shelf of these dainty kinds make, having the 
old Pelargonium tricolor, P. ardens, quinque vulnerum, 
&c., amongst them. Like the Euclisias, the mere size 
has carried too much importance, but the public will 
retrace their steps in this respect; indeed they have 
already begun to do so. It so happens that, as a 
general rule, with size of flower comes size of foliage, 
and as another clumsy concomitant, size of plant. Now 
this is all very well for the corridor and balcony men, but 
mark how it ties the hands of our amateurs, with their 
little band-box greenhouses. Thus much digression on 
behalf of these beautiful horticultural minnikins: now 
to the point in hand. I cannot myself furnish Moores 
Victory, but ten to one some of the subscribers to The 
Cottage Gardener will do so. As to the old Com¬ 
mander-in-Chief , I well remember an old and enthusi¬ 
astic gardener, a neighbour, driving to Davey’s, in the 
King’s-road, sometime about the year 1813, (as I think) 
to purchase one; and what a fuss was made within his 
little circle about “ the guinea Geranium," which pro¬ 
duced such large flowers. I much fear this Commander 
would simply rank as a subaltern in these marvellous 
times ; when the last new thing is, of course, “ the best 
in the world.” Davey made first a great noise about the 
Prince Regent, some forty years ago. Then came out 
the Royal Oeorge, then Generalissimo, and then Com¬ 
mander, and a pretty sum he made of them. 
Most of these bouncing Geraniums were, I conceive, 
obtained, on the one side at least, from the old P. cucul- 
latum, which, by the course of culture pursued when I 
was a lad, generally contrived to blossom when “ full of 
years.” R. Errington. 
THE ELOWER-GARDEN. 
Noisette Roses. —It is in this section that we must 
look for climbing roses to plant against the front of 
dwelling-houses with a south aspect, including also south¬ 
east and south-west. A west aspect, in a sheltered 
situation, will suit some of them, and some, with high 
! titles, are not worth planting at all— Solfaterre, for 
instance. I have grown this useless rose for some years 
under the most favourable circumstances; in a border as 
rich as it could be made, twenty inches deep, five feet 
wide, and as dry at the bottom as would suit a Muscat 
of Alexandria; a wall due south, or nearly so, kept 
warm with hot water pipes in winter, and covered with 
good glass from the beginning of October to the middle 
of May, with power to give it as much air as if it were 
on an open wall; yet in five years I only got one really 
good flower from it, and that was a good one certainly. 
It generally flowers early and late, in May and again in 
October, but not very freely. I consider it altogether 
unfit for our climate ; nevertheless, if others have found 
1 it to answer well under other circumstances, and will 
send us accounts with the proper names of the places 
and writers, we shall publish them and cancel ray 
verdict; but if we cannot establish a good character for 
it, the best way is to scratch it out of the lists. The 
celebrated Cloth of Gold is a Noisette, and one of the 
best if it was a certain bloomer, which it certainly is not; 
—I believe the fault is not altogether in our climate, 
but that it is partial to particular soils, like the Old 
double-yellow Rose; for I have known it to bloom 
tolerably well without any particular indulgence, and 
I have seen it fail under very good management. A 
friend of mine blooms it most beautifully trained in a i 
cool, airy conservatory. Unless its roots are well con 
fined it should not be much pruned. Established plants j 
of it, which refuse to bloom freely, should be root-pruned I 
about the end of August, in order to check its late ! 
growth, and so ripen the young wood before winter. 
There are four good White Noisettes ; the best of them 
is Lamarque, a strong pillar Rose ; the next best is La. 
Biche, another pillar Rose, which runs much farther 
than Lamarque, and does not bloom so late. The next 
two whites are dwarf— Aimee Vibert and Miss Glegg. 
The latter is the best bedder of the two, on account of its 
growing more freely, and its better scent. The scent of 
Aimee Vibert is very bad indeed: it should never be 
put in a nosegay. Jaune Desprez is one of the best of 
this class to plant against a house with a south or west 
aspect. It covers a large space in a few years, and is 
remarkably sweet after the manner of the tea-scented ones, 
but it is not a safe one to bud other Roses on, as a hard 
winter is apt to injure the bark and young wood. 1 had 
a very fine specimen of this a few years since against 
my house, and, being close at hand, I used to bud every 
new Rose 1 could get on it; but, with the exception of 
La Biche, they all died or dwindled away on it in three 
or four years. The Tyrian Purple Noisette (Pourpre de 
Tyre) is a most beautiful pillar Rose, and a good one 
to fill up the bottom of a rose-wall when the strong¬ 
growing ones get naked. It is the best half-climbing 
Rose we have of that colour—a purplish crimson. It 
only flowered with me at the end of strong shoots. If 
older plants of it made small side-shoots, and flowered 
on them like Gloire de Rosamene, it would he a charming 
Rose; but I fear the habit of it will not allow of that 
style of free-flowering. A cross between this and the 
Crimson Boursault would give us such a climber as one 
of our correspondents asked last summer—a perpetual 
evergreen, dark-flowered climber. Fellenberg is well 
spoken of as another high-coloured Noisette, but I never 
saw it in flower myself; considering, however, the small 
number of dark Roses in this class, I admit it into 
this selection. To have flowers of these two shades of 
dark Noisettes in October and November for mixing 
with the Gloire de Rosamene in nosegays, all of them 
with the buds half open only, it will be necessary to 
begin pruning, or rather stopping their second growth, 
as soon as the shoots are six inches long, and to keep 
on stopping to the end of August, without letting them 
flower at the end of June. This will throw them into 
close bushes, which will begin to bloom by the end of 
September, or early in October, when they would need 
a strong dose or two of rich liquid manure, and would 
well pay for all this attention for two months or more. 
I am not so sure about the Noisettes keeping in bloom 
very late without some glass protection, but I have often 
seen the Rosamene in good bud at Christmas. All the 
strong Bourbon Roses which flower only on the top of 
long rambling shoots would be much prettier in beds if 
they were stopped in the same way; that is, between 
the summer and autumn bloom ; at any rate it would 
be a good plan to have some of the best under this 
treatment in the reserve ground, so as to have many 
varieties to cut for glasses and nosegays very late in 
the season, and when we shall have rose-houses on 
Mr. River’s orchard-house plan, that will be the proper 
plan to follow for having flowers all the winter, and to 
have no winter-pruning at all, merely to stop any shoot 
