Success with Hardy Roses. 
" Oh, what lovely flowers, Doctor ! Won't you tell me your secret how you can grow such splendid roses, while mine, 
although I buy Mr. Elliott’s finest plants and choicest varieties every' season, do no good at all?” 
“ With pleasure ; but first tell me the secret of your playing so charmingly on the piano.” 
“ Oh, my secret is easily told. I love music, and have practiced faithfully almost without intermission for years.” 
“ And I love my roses, and, while I have not given to them a tithe of the effort you have to your music, yet I have 
cherished them fondly, and have tried faithfully to supply their every want, and my reward has been great in an abundance 
of perfect blooms.” 
The above, overheard in our store room, tells the whole story of successful rose culture. You will succeed if you 
deserve to, and your success or failure will be in exact proportion to your effort. It is true, it is more difficult to grow roses 
than corn or potatoes, and it is also true the reward is greater if you care for roses. 
My space will not allow me to give an exhaustive treatise on the rose, but I will point out some cases of failure, and 
give some plain directions for culture that will enable the novice, at least, to start right. First, let us consider some primary 
causes of failure. 
For several years many of our plantsmen, with a false idea of popularizing the rose, have endeavored to see who could 
sell the most roses for a dollar ; some have offered five, some ten, others fifteen, and I think I have seen advertisements 
offering twenty, all sent safely by mail, postpaid. And to read the catalogues of these rose growers one would suppose all 
that was necessary for success in rose culture was to invest a dollar for five, ten, fifteen or twenty roses, as it might happen, 
in their unrivaled rose plants, and ever afterward our gardens would blossom with an abundance of perfect roses. These 
roses are generally good varieties, and worth all that is asked for them, but they make failure almost certain, for they are 
but infants, and if sent by mail very sickly infants at that, and need the tender care of an experienced nurse, and should 
not have left their nurse, the plantsman, for many months. 
Then to start with, get good strong plants from one to two years old — we are now considering hardy roses — costing 
from four to ten dollars per dozen for older varieties (the novelties will cost more), and, if getting them from a distance, 
have them sent by express. 
If they are ■worth having at all they are worth paying express charges on. 
