Roses and Their 
Garden Culture 
SELECTION, PLANTING AND CARE TO GET THE BEST RESULTS FROM YOUR ROSE 
GARDEN-LAYING OUT AND PREPARING THE BED—SOME OF THE BEST VARIETIES 
by Grace Tabor 
Photographs by M. H. Northend, Chas. Jones and Nathan R. Graves 
Rose arbors are often possible in place of a regular rose 
garden. This one shows Lady Gay 
R OSES are without doubt the most aristocratic, exclusive, 
and in some ways exacting' flowers that the garden knows, 
and it is necessary to love them very dearly and to know them 
rather intimately, in the way that only real affection will help 
you to know them, to grow them as they should be grown and 
in the way that gives best results. Primarily the rose is grown 
for roses, and not for any value which the plants have in making 
a garden picture. Its place, therefore, is quite apart from the 
picturesque part of the garden, and it should never be thought of 
nor planted as a shrub. Neither should it be mixed in with the 
growth of a herbaceous border. For here too, it will disappoint, 
in that it has practically no beauty of the kind required in such 
planting. Until you have come to a full realization of this, and 
to a feeling towards it which makes 
you quite willing to give it the space 
which it requires and the setting 
which alone will bring out its best 
points and all the wonderful beauty 
of its flowers, my earnest advice 
would be, do not have any roses 
at all. 
This setting apart of a rose gar¬ 
den does not by any means require 
large grounds or much space. A 
single rose bed, holding only a dozen 
plants, may be treated in such a way 
that it becomes a rose garden quite 
as truly as the acre set apart for them 
on a great estate. Do them the jus¬ 
tice, however, of giving even such a 
bed those little touches that distin¬ 
guish it. That is, let it be sur¬ 
rounded with a walk of turf, pref¬ 
erably, and outside of this, making a 
boundary, plant something which 
may answer for a hedge. Many things will serve this purpose. 
My own choice for the small space is lavender, rosemary or mint. 
Of these the latter is perhaps the easiest to secure and the most 
certain to survive, although both the others may be carried 
through the winter with suitable protection. Such an herb hedge 
may be trimmed very much as a hedge of privet or any of the 
more substantial growths — or it may be left to grow in its natural 
fashion. Boundary plantings of the shrub roses are delightful, 
but these are suited only to a fairly large space, and, of course, 
the familiar woody hedges of all kinds are excellent. Indeed, 
almost any form of definite boundary treatment may be used, the 
one essential being to set the rose garden apart and make it a dis¬ 
tinctive feature. The necessity for this treatment lies in the 
exacting demands of the rose plant, 
and the fact that these demands have 
developed an altogether different 
standard of beauty to rule rose 
planting. 
So much for generalities. Assum¬ 
ing that you are ready to make a 
rose garden, and anxious to plant 
the roses, the first thing to be done 
is to select the site for the former. It 
must be in full sun, somewhat shel¬ 
tered from the coldest and rawest of 
winter winds, and well drained. 
There should be no trees nor shrubs 
within fifteen feet of the beds — and 
the beds themselves must be abso¬ 
lutely clean kept, with no growth of 
any sort whatsoever at the feet of 
the plants. This means, of course, 
that the earth is going to show; and 
this is one of the features of a rose 
garden that is quite impossible to 
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