November 2, 1907. 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
711 
Mrs. W. J. 6 rant. Two Tea Roses which 
you might try on that border are White 
Maman Cbchet and Mire. Lambard. To 
fill the other border on the west side of the 
garden, you could have two bushes of each 
of some of the above, or, what is better, get 
other varieties for the sate of variation. 
For that purpose we should name Prince 
Camille de Rohan, Alfred Colomb, Gustave 
Piganeau, Charles Lefebvre, and Suzanne M. 
Rodocanachi, all of which are H. P. Roses. 
Some H. T.’s well worth adding to the list 
are Augustine Guinnoiseau, Gustave Regis, 
Mme. Pernet-Ducher, Gruss an Teplitz, and 
Marquise de Salisbury. Before commenc¬ 
ing to plant the above, you should have the 
border trenched about 2J4 ft. deep and well 
manured. This should be done at once and 
the Roses planted as soon as you can get 
them. It is unnecessary to mention where 
they can be got, as all of the above are good 
varieties and grown by every Rose grower 
of any importance. You will find the names 
of at least eight firms of Rose growers in 
last week’s issue of The Gardening World, 
all of whom are well known. 
2332. Old Neglected Roses. 
May I ask you to kindly answer the fol¬ 
lowing question in the next number of The 
Gardening World? What can be done to 
bush Roses (which still flower in the sea¬ 
son) which have been allowed to grow until 
they are now a vast tangled mass all inter¬ 
mixed anyhow? (Laborare, Surrey.) 
You should leave them until spring when 
you can commence pruning them, the Hy¬ 
brid Perpetuals about the middle of March 
and the Teas about the beginning of April. 
At that time commence by cutting out the 
oldest stems and all dead wood, as well as 
small and useless shoots. In thinning out 
the bushes, retain strong, young shoots to 
furnish the ground without being in any 
way crowded. If there are no young shoots, 
then you must leave some of the best old 
ones, but in any case thoroughly thin them 
out, and this will cause the plants to throw 
up young shoots from the base. In the year 
following you can then have young stems 
to furnish all you require. The shoots that 
are left should then be shortened accord¬ 
ing to their kind. If the Roses are not 
very old, you will be able to renew them in 
this way. During winter they could be fed 
by the use of liquid manure or even a top 
dressing of cow manure, to be dug in after 
you have pruned them in spring. 
TREES AND SHRUBS . 
2333. Keeping Oak Trees Dwarf. 
I have two small Oak trees from acorns, 
first in a glass, now planted out of doors. 
They are about 18 in. high. Is it possible 
to pot these and have them indoors, also to 
dwarf them, so that they will not grow to 
any extent, will keep alive and be healthy? 
(Nails, Warwickshire.) 
It is quite possible to grow the Oaks you 
mention in pots. Wait until the leaves fall, 
then lift the trees and root-prune them, re¬ 
taining as much of the fibre as possible. 
By root-pruning them you will be able to 
get them into pots of relatively small size. 
You can then cut back the trees, either now 
or in spring. This would practically give 
you a fresh start with plants of small size. 
You can grow them indoors, provided you 
have them close to the glass in a window 
while making their growth. Indeed, you 
would be able to get much finer and more 
leathery leaves if you would have them out 
of doors until the leaves had not only 
reached full size, but acquired their accus¬ 
tomed summer hardness. They would then 
be less troublesome indoors after their 
leaves are thus fully developed. Keep them 
confined in the same pots from year to year, 
and give them iust sufficient water to keep 
them alive. Of course, as they get some 
years old and the pot filled with roots, they 
will require a good deal of water to keep 
them alive during summer. The branches 
produced if inclined to grow too strong 
should be kept tied down. You will thus 
see that the operation is a compromise be¬ 
tween starving the plants and keeping them 
alive. If you had conceived this idea before 
you might have had the trees quite of small 
size by confining their root-room from the 
time they were planted as acorns. We do 
not think you will have much trouble, how¬ 
ever, in keeping the trees of small size, as 
the Oak is naturally of slow growth, and 
may be kept down either by pruning annu¬ 
ally or by tying down any rampant branch 
that may appear and by keeping them in 
small quantity of soil. It might be worth 
your while to get more acorns so as to begin 
the work afresh. 
2334. Pruning the Scarlet Honey¬ 
suckle. 
Will you be so kind as to give me some 
information about how to prune the scarlet 
Honeysuckle? I have it growing on the 
house facing the east exposed to ^strong 
winds which we have frequently, but It does 
not seem to flourish, though it does not die. 
Would it improve it to cut it well back at 
the right reason, and will you tell me when 
that time is? It does not show any growth 
except at the top. (G. T. W., Northumber¬ 
land.) 
The Scarlet Honeysuckle requires rather a 
higher temperature than you would get out 
of doors. We have grown it on a south 
aspect wall much further north than your 
locality, but although it kept alive and pro¬ 
duced a few shoots chiefly at the end of the 
branches, it did not give much satisfaction. 
The best place for it is really in a green¬ 
house, even although unheated, because such 
shelter gives it a longer period of growing, 
and to get plenty of flowers it is necessary 
to encourage good growth. The only other 
suggestion we would make would be to plant 
it in a more sheltered situation facing the 
south, if possible, so as to encourage it to 
make growth. Before planting, it would be 
well to take out a hole 2 ft. wide and 2 ft. 
deep, and if the soil is bad, using good 
material chiefly. This would give the plant 
a good start, which would, no doubt, prove 
serviceable. You can prune it any time in 
March, but if the plant was grown under 
glass, you could prune it well back to a 
bud at the base of each shoot just after 
the period of flowering. 
2335. Rhododendrons on Chalk. 
Unfortunately for the purpose of grow¬ 
ing Rhododendra, Ericeae, etc., we lie ujion 
the limestone. Determined to overcome 
this barrier, I had a strip of land dug freshly 
last autumn, a quantity of the soil (ballast) 
taken out, and the remainder incorporated 
with a great quantity of littery horse man¬ 
ure. It seems to promise well. I have 
made pit9 18 in. across and ft. deep, 
in which I have placed a mixture of turf 
and burnt loam, and in this I have planted 
the Rhododendra. Will you kindly tell me 
what else I can do to make the soil still 
more closely to native conditions? I am 
told that immediately the roots touch the 
limestone the leaves turn yellow. How can 
I keep the roots to the surface? By top 
dressing? (J. P. Treasure, Monmouth.) 
The chief point in growing Rlhododen- 
drons under the conditions you name is to 
get a soil of sufficient depth that will en¬ 
able the plants to keep on growing from year 
to year without actually getting into the 
chalk. Although a stray root or two may 
get into it, we do not see that that should 
necessarily make the leaves turn yellow. If 
you could have taken out the natural soil 
to the depth of 3 ft. and filled up the hole 
with peat, the difficulty would have been 
overcome. The next best material would be 
leaf mould, either by itself or mixed with 
an equal proportion of turfy loam, without 
chalk if possible. We have seen the mud 
of a pond used with great advantage. The 
plan adopted was to take out the mud and 
throw it up in a heap where it lay for a 
twelvemonth till it got sweetened. During 
this time it would be turned once or twice. 
We are not very much in favour of horse 
manure for Rhododendrons, but if the plants 
are small the manure may be well decayed 
before they come in contact with it. What 
they really want is decayed vegetable mat¬ 
ter, often spoken of as vegetable humus, 
and plenty of it. You can still lift the 
Rhododendrons, however, on future occa¬ 
sions if they appear to be in any distress dur¬ 
ing any succeeding summer. You can then 
make a point of lifting them and taking out 
large holes to be refilled with suitable 
material for them, and this will have the 
effect of restoring them. Very large plants 
can be lifted with a ball of soil in the spring¬ 
time, just before the plants commence grow¬ 
ing. Top dressings, as* you suggest, would 
also be very useful in their way, and such 
top dressings might consist of leaf mould, 
peat, or other vegetable matter, such as de¬ 
cayed heaps of weeds taken off the garden 
mixed with dressings of wood ashes. These 
top dressings will serve to retain the mois¬ 
ture in the soil and will also, by that means, 
help to keep the roots near the surface. 
The present is a suitable time to get leaves 
for the purpose of getting leaf mould after 
they have been rotted for a year. 
fruit. 
2336. A Useful Screen. 
Rough plan of kitchen garden enclosed. 
I want to plant a slight wind screen on the 
dotted line and would prefer something use¬ 
ful instead of the usual Privet, etc. Would 
a line of Raspberry canes, well wired and 
staked, or Black Currant bushes, or some¬ 
thing similar do? (A. E. G., Lancs.) 
Raspberries would make a very useful 
screen provided the soil in your garden made 
them grow strongly. For instance, if you 
can get them to throw up canes 5 ft. and 
6 ft. in height, or if there are any Rasp¬ 
berries in your neighbourhood to show that 
they will make such growth, then the hedge 
might be made accordingly. Two varieties 
of strong growth are Superlative and Fas- 
tolf. The best plan under these circum¬ 
stances is to have the ground trenched and 
well manured, adding considerable quanti¬ 
ties of leaf mould. Manure from an old 
Melon hotbed would be splendid material 
for the purpose. Then have strong posts let 
in at either end of the proposed hedge with 
more slender supporting poles between, and 
20 ft. to 30 ft. apart. Two wires would be 
sufficient to tie the canes to. We have, 
however, other suggestions with fruit to 
make. For instance, if you liked Black¬ 
berries, you could have a hedge of the 
European one, known as Rubus laciniatus 
or the American Wilson Junior. The Lo¬ 
ganberry is also a strong growing Bramble, 
which fruits heavily when once it has been 
properly established. Either or all of these 
could be tied to wires as suggested for the 
R/aspberries. Another plan would be to 
have a line of Apples or Pears in the form 
of single upright cordons planted about 15 
in. apart. In order to prevent the trees 
from growing too strongly the Apples should 
be grafted or budded on the Paradise stock 
and Pears on the Quince stock. These keep 
the trees growing slowly, and induce them 
to fruit at an earlier age than they other¬ 
wise would. Apples could be depended 
upon to much greater extent than Pears 
under these conditions, though we have seen 
both of them succeeding admirably in the 
form of cordons. The plan is simply to cut 
back all the side shoots in winter every year 
leaving only the short spurs to produce fruit. 
