40 
House & Garde 
The POSSIBILITIES of a SMALL ROSE GARDEN 
BEATRIX BUDELI, 
// you plan a rose garden, let it be for 
roses alone. The bushes will not com¬ 
bine well with other plants, either 
physically or esthetically 
T he best results in gardening, as in 
everying else, come from individu¬ 
ality backed by loiowledge, but to most 
of us individuality plus knowledge sug¬ 
gests expense—it means calling in the 
specialist. Perhaps that is one reason 
why good rose gardens are so scarce in 
our smaller suburban towns. Even those 
of us who have spent years in gardening 
sometimes lack initiative. We should 
like to call in the landscape gardener 
and have a real rose garden, but instead 
we do as our neighbor does and make 
flower beds and borders. That is 
cheaper. 
The delightful old New England gardens 
of our grandmothers’ day had every recjuisite 
that a rose garden, or any other garden, 
should have. Simplicity was their keynote. 
Their makers took as precedent the thing 
they knew, the English adaptation of the 
Italian gardens of the Renaissance, in vogue 
in England at the time of the Puritan exodus. 
The design was often the same; paths radiat¬ 
ing from a central bed and all encompassed 
by the higher varieties of flowers, wall or 
hedge which gave it great seclusion. A gar¬ 
den as well as a room should be lived in to 
give it charm, and one of the greatest of all 
charms is that intimacy which comes from 
perfect privacy. 
Unity Essential 
Unity is the natural result of seclusion. 
A garden restricted to a distinct area has to 
be treated more or less formally, and for a 
An arch covered with pink 
or white Dorothy Perkins 
forms a thoroughly suita¬ 
ble entrance to the small 
rose garden 
Simplicity must be the keynote of the 
small garden. Whatever ornaments are 
used should be dignified and unosten¬ 
tatious, like this sundial 
rose garden, formal or semi-fonnal treat¬ 
ment is usually the best. A rose garden 
can be as small or as large as the avail- 
able space and the purse of the owner 
can make it; but beds scattered over the 
lawns are not rose gardens. The rose 
garden, though so small that it can be in¬ 
cluded in a city backyard, must be as 
complete as are sunken or Italian gar¬ 
dens. 
Small gardens have a chann of their 
own. I know one that tops the rise of a 
broad lawn and forms one of a group of 
transitions from the house and its enfolding 
green to the practical vegetable and fruit gar¬ 
dens. The arches and sundial are simple in 
design, as they should be for such a small 
garden, and their slight ornamentation adds 
just enough to attract that second glance of 
interest which means so much. 
From this little garden of eighty-five bushes 
roses were obtained from the first week in 
June until late in November, and that in spite 
of the unfavorable conditions resulting from 
the shade of adjacent trees. The hybrid per- 
petuals and one hybrid tea—Gruss an Teplitz 
—are planted on the outer edges, making a 
sort of hedge, while the inner borders and the 
two oblong beds within the garden contain 
hybrid teas. The choicer varieties are placed 
by themselves in the parallel beds and also in 
front of the broader bed that forms the back¬ 
ground for the sundial. At least two plants 
’ {Continued on page 68) 
