5 2 
A FEW FLOWERS 
the rose garden, and among the many ways they can be used are : covering fences ; making hedges, screens and arches 
of roses ; training on a post so as to make pillars over low-growing trees, or on a trellis at the back of a hardy border ; 
or isolating climbers on the grass without support, and allowing them to grow as they please. 
For covering fences the Hybrid Climbing, the Prairie, the Ayrshire and the Multiflora Roses are all good. For making 
a hedge there is none so good as Multiflora rosea ; we have an accidental example of this in our nursery. A row of this rose 
remaining unsold, it was allowed to grow without 
receiving any attention at all, and within three 
years it made a solid hedge five or six feet high, 
which, in June, is literally covered with a solid 
mass of bloom from the ground to the top. The 
flowers are in countless thousands, and no 
description can give any idea of the loveliness of 
this hedge. The Sweet Briar makes a beautiful 
hedge, and so does the Madame Plantier Rose, 
with its abundant pure white flowers. 
For making pillars of roses the Hybrid 
Climbers should be used. These pillars, when 
isolated on the grass, are very effective. Before 
planting the roses a space of ground two or three 
feet wide should be deeply dug and thoroughly 
enriched, and in this place a post, preferably of 
iron, solidly and secure from strong winds, about 
six or seven feet high. On this the roses should 
be trained, two or three or only one color on a 
post, as desired, allowing them to grow as natur¬ 
ally as possible, and give no pruning except to 
remove the dead wood each spring. 
For training on trees, covering arches, or for 
any purpose where a free-climbing growth is 
desired, the Prairie and Ayrshire Roses should be 
used. And the single roses should have a place 
in every garden, for these are the roses the artist 
always chooses for painting. 
Now as to the arrangement of the rose 
garden, which is purely a matter of individual 
taste, I think I cannot do better than conclude 
by quoting a part of a chapter from Reynolds 
Hole’s “ Book About Roses”: 
“ ‘ I am now,’ wrote the Czarina to Voltaire in the year 1772 , ‘ wildly in love with the English style of gardening ; its 
waving lines and gentle declivities’; and so was all the gardening world. Sixty years later, in my own childhood, there 
were in the garden before me, as I write—and now little more than one subdivided flower bed — those bowers and 
meandering walks, many a pleasant nook, where the aged might rest, young men and maidens sigh their love, and happy 
children play. Ah 1 what delicious facilities for 1 1 spy,’ and for ‘ hide-and-seek,’ where now there is but scant conceal¬ 
ment for the furtive hungry cat 1 What looking into eyes, what approximation of lips, where now it would be ‘ bragian ’ 
boldness to squeeze a body's hand. 
“ But what do I see as the mist clears? A garden which, like a thousand others, has obeyed the command of impe¬ 
rious Fashion — Away with your borders, your mounds and your clumps! Away with walks, and with grottos, nooks, 
corners, light and shade 1 Down with your timber ! To the rubbish heap with your Lilacs, Laburnums and blossoming 
trees ! Stub, lay bare, level and turf; then cover the whole with line and measure with a geometrical design. Do you 
require examples ? Copy your carpets or the ornaments on your pork-pie. Then purchase or provide for the spring 
bulbs by the sack ; for the summer, Geraniums and Coleus by the million ; for the winter, hardy Evergreens and infant 
Conifers—brought prematurely from the nursery , like too many of our precocious children — by the wagon load.” 
************ 
“ I would have the approach to a Rosary made purposely obscure and narrow, that the visitor may come with a sudden 
gladness and wonder upon the glowing scene, as the traveler by rail emerges from the dark tunnel into the brightness of 
day and a fair landscape, or as some dejected whist player finds at the extremity of wretched cards the ace, king and 
queen of trumps ! I should like to conduct the visitors to my Rosarium between walls of rock-work or through high fern- 
covered banks, and, by a sudden turn at the end of our avenue, to dazzle him into ecstacy. He should feel as Kane, 
the explorer, did when, after an Arctic winter, he saw the sun shine once more and 1 felt as though he were bathing in 
perfumed waters.’ 
“ I must not finish my harangue on arrangement until I have answered a question, often asked : When the space 
