38 
A S 
S H 
House & 
Garden 
USING ROSES 
RUBS 
There Is No Need to Limit the Shrubbery Plantings to the Conventional Forms Such as Spirea 
and Deictzia, for Some of the Roses Are Admirable for This Purpose 
j. HORACE McFarland 
The wild Prairie rose (Rosa setigera) as tised in the Arnold Arboretum 
demonstrates its value as an ornamental shrub of high quality 
The Rugosa hybrid 
roses are hardy and 
especially adaptable 
as shrubs of various 
sizes 
selves, both because they were not 
attractive and—it was believed— 
would not flourish in the hardy 
borders which are the joy of the 
modern gardener. 
Yet there are roses that do ad¬ 
mirable duty as shrubs, taking 
place in the hardy border with the 
forsytliias, the mock oranges, of 
deciduous character; the rhodo¬ 
dendrons, the laurels, that carry 
foliage the year around, and with 
the smaller distinctively evergreen 
coniferous plants in varied forms. 
A distinguished landscape archi¬ 
tect wrote for the 1916 American 
Rose Annual these words: “When 
I tell people that I propose to 
plant roses near the house or along 
the drives, it is often hard to make 
them see what I mean, for roses 
are to most people objects for per¬ 
sonal adornment or for table em- 
l)ellishment.” Then this land¬ 
scape worker, Mr. Charles Down¬ 
ing Lay, proceeds to develop his 
idea by discussing the summer 
and winter beauty of “the common 
roses of the thickets, which have 
mostly been neglected by the 
rosarian and the hybridizer, and 
which retain the simple delicacy 
of single flowers, together with 
the rugged constitution which 
means thrifty growth and pleasing 
foliage.” 
Good Wild Varieties 
To most of us, the words “wild 
rose” bring to mind a few strag- 
gl}' blooms which 
have been left along 
the highway because 
the road supervisor 
has not recently been 
busy with his de¬ 
structive scythe. To 
some fortunate indi¬ 
viduals the wild rose 
of the Eastern States, 
Rosa setigera, also 
called the Prairie 
rose, brings to mind 
tlie glorious develop¬ 
ment in the Arnold 
Arboretum, where 
great masses of these 
and other good shrub 
roses make the road¬ 
ways lovely in June 
and attractive all the 
rest of the year. We 
also think with pleas¬ 
ure—those of us who 
have followed the 
landscape and gar¬ 
den shrubbery use of 
the rose as exempli¬ 
fied in the .Arnold 
Arboretum and also 
in Franklin Park, 
Boston, as well as to 
W HILE it is true that the 
word “rose” uttered in the 
hearing of an)' average outdoor 
-American connotes the familiar 
fragrant flowers of a James Whit¬ 
comb Riley “day in June”, it is 
also true that if called upon to 
describe the rose, that same av¬ 
erage outdoor American, who 
would be thinking principally of 
these same June roses and the 
everblooming roses, would not 
visualize them in any satisfactory 
form of plant. 
Our outdoor American knows 
that the lilac is a shrub, beautiful 
and fragrant in early spring; that 
the spireas and the deutzias and 
hydrangeas are similarly shrubs, 
distinctively fine when in flower 
and sufficiently attractive in form 
when not in flower to be given a 
place. 
Customary Conceptions 
But the rose as he conceives it 
is just a flower, and not a shrub. 
It is evidenced in straggly bushes, 
glorified at times by the loveliest 
flowers in the world, but pain¬ 
fully likely to be disreputable 
much of the year. If it is the 
June rose, miscalled “hybrid per¬ 
petual” in rose terminology, he 
knows that it usually has long and 
bare legs, so that its thorny extent 
is rather a disagreeable feature of 
the garden from the end of the 
June burst until, if culture is 
[)roper, there may follow a few 
straggling but ex¬ 
ceedingly welcome 
blooms in the fall. 
If he thinks of the 
fragrant but tender 
tea roses, of the hy- 
brid tea roses of 
varied and wonder¬ 
ful colors, he remem¬ 
bers them with pain 
in so far as the aver¬ 
age plant is con¬ 
cerned, because of its 
disposition much of 
the year to have mil¬ 
dewed foliage, or 
foliage diseased by 
“black-spot”, or no 
foliage at all. 
Roses in Borders 
Garden writers 
have usually advised 
the amateur that 
roses must Ire plant¬ 
ed in beds by them- 
