dbe IRationa! IRurser^man. 
FOR GROWERS AND DEALERS IN NURSERY STOCK 
The National Nurseryman Publishing Co., Incorporated 
Vol. XXXI. HATBORO. PENNA., JUNE 1923 No. 6 
Radio Talk on Roses 
By Robert Pyle, Conrad & Jones Company, West Grove, Pa., Broadcasted From WfZ, Newark, N. J. 
Ladies and Gentlemen: 
Whatever of value I may be able to say to you during the 
next few minutes will reach you, of course, solely through your 
sense of hearing, but the Rose herself you will find is vastly 
more entrancing than anything I may say about her, partly be¬ 
cause she can appeal to you through three of your sense chan¬ 
nels, all at the same time—your sense of touch and of smell and 
of sight. 
If I could hand each of you a bouquet of roses, or even one 
rose, would it not please you to hold it in your hand and feel 
the cool petals against your face as you buried your nose close 
up to get a deep draught of that exquisite fragrance; and then 
I know, by the seeing of your eye, you would become enraptured 
with its beauty of form and color. 
Do you not agree with me that its capacity so unerringly Lo 
reach the heart of man through any one, or all three, of these 
sense channels, probably accounts for the fact that throughout 
all ages, as far back as we have any record, the Rose has been 
man’s most cherished companion in the floral kingdom. Six 
hundred years before Christ the Grecian Poetess sappho wrote: 
“Would Jove appoint some flower to reign 
In matchless beauty on the plain 
The Rose (mankind will all agree) 
The Rose The Queen of Flowers should be.” 
Do you realize that over twenty centuries before Columbus 
set foot on this continent another Grecian, the Poet Anacreon 
wrote: 
“O lovely Rose! to thee I sing! 
Thou sweetest, fairest child of Spring!” 
Pliny carefully desscribed the Rose of his day and Herodotus 
of an earlier time, and, confirming its use by the Jews, fully a 
thousand years before Christ, Solomon gives us proof of the 
esteem in which the Rose was held, and later Isaiah writes— 
“And the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the Rose.” 
Without doubt the rose has the most ancient ancestry and 
the most interesting history of any plant in your garden. Poets 
and Philosophers, Pagans and Christians, potentates of church 
and state, have cherished its use as a sacred symbol, have em¬ 
blazoned it on their banners and struck it upon their coins. 
From time immemorial the Rose has been a part of the exper¬ 
ience of the race. 
As an example of how a custom will outlive dynasties, we 
learn that capricious Cupid in the age of fable gave a rose to 
Harpocrates to keep silent regarding certain meetings on the 
part of other gods. So began the custom among Grecian tribes 
to suspend a rose from the ceiling of their meeting place whfie 
the council was in session as a symbol of secrecy, and to this 
day our term “Sub-Rosa”—meaning “under the Rose” betokens 
a similar secret understanding. 
Even though the Rose has blushed and breathed its fragrance 
for church and state, for Queen and Court, in war and peace in 
the past, it is the present day use of the rose which will prob¬ 
ably interest my audience most. How many of you who are 
listening know the pleasure to be had from roses either as 
cut flowers or on your lawn. 
How many of you noticed when motoring across almost any 
state in Rose time that only a few folks even yet have begun 
to realize the possibilities of pleasure, uplift and spiritual re¬ 
freshment that lie latent in the use of the rose about the home. 
As yet more spectacular development and one which promises 
unlimited growth is the Rosification of our Highways as is 
now advocated by a chain of towns in the Finger Lake Section 
of New York State. 
However, the railroads have stolen a march on the State 
Highway folks, and few indeed are those who travel in June 
over the N. Y. N. H. & H. for example, near Mount Vernon, who 
cannot testify to the heightened scenic beauty of the railroad 
embankments which have been beautified with trailing roses. 
Edward Bok, formery editor of “The Ladies’ Home Journal” be¬ 
gan this practice by inducing the Pennsylvania Railroad to per¬ 
mit him to plant trailing roses along their right of way near 
Merion Station. Last autumn the speaker had the privilege of 
co-operating with the Long Island Railroad, which will shortly 
have a similar display out Jamaica way. People just love to see 
a sight of this kind, and this, added to the fact that certain roses 
are unexcelled for retaining embankments against erosion, are 
reasons for predicting that such enterprise on the part of rail¬ 
roads is likely to become much more extensive in the future. 
Last summer at the Annual Convention of the American Park 
Executives held in Minneapolis, after consideration of the sub¬ 
ject of Municipal Rose Gardens for Public Parks, the following 
resolution was unanimously adopted: 
“Whereas, experience with Municipal Rose Gardens has 
proved their possibilities and popularity far in excess of pro¬ 
portionate cost, therefore be it 
“Resolved, that we recommend that every Park Board in af¬ 
filiation with us which has not already adopted this standard 
shall give earnest consideration to the development of a Rose 
Garden as a unit of recognized importance in their system.” 
Happily for those interested, pioneer work of this character 
for the last fifteen years has proved so abundantly successful 
as to justify the above endorsement by America’s leading Park 
Executives. 
I remember in 1906 on my return from Europe, visiting the 
recently established Municipal Rose Garden in Elizabeth Park, 
Hartford, Conn. I had been visiting various famous rose gar¬ 
dens on the continent of Europe in contrast to which this little 
Garden struck me as a very lonely though a very excellent be¬ 
ginning, but it has proved so successful and so popular that 
Hartford’s example is being followed in many other American 
cities. The Elizabeth Park Rose Garden is but one and a quar¬ 
ter acres in extent. It cost $2,682.00. The average yearly cost 
for maintenance has been about 2 y 2 c per square foot, it contains 
116 rose beds with some 300 varieties, and about 1500 separate 
plants. It attracts about one hundred thousand people a year 
and the Superintendent of the Hartford Park System says it is 
doubtful if any other single acre in the open attracts so many 
persons to it. He further says that this Rose Garden probably 
attracts ten thousand people from outside the state to it every 
year. As an advertisement he thinks the Rose Garden brings 
back a greater return in money to the city than is expanded for 
its maintenance. Thus the Elizabeth Park Rose Garden has 
made Hartford famous among Rose lovers throughout the East. 
But it has remained for Portland, Oregon, with its splendid 
climate, to capitalize the Rose as an advertising medium. Port¬ 
land’s organization of Royal Rosarians each year stages a Rose 
Festival in which the entire city participates and which attracts 
visitors in large numbers. Portland, Oregon will this year ded 
icate its Municipal Rose Garden containing 14,000 plants in 
1200 separate varieties, elaborately planned and with great 
