THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
219 
The Propagation and Growing of the Rose 
Paper read by E. G. Hill before llie American Associalkm of Nurserymen al Chicago, 1919 
I take it as an unusual honor to receive an invitation 
from your society to address you on the subject assigned, 
for the reason tlial you liave so many competent gentle¬ 
men within your own organization who could do this sub¬ 
ject the fullest justice. 
The Rose is pre-eminent among flowers. It still stands 
unrivalled in popularity, as it has from time immemorial; 
Sappho sang its praises and historians and poets paid 
homage to its beauty throughout the ages, and because of 
its firm hold upon the people, through sentiment and as¬ 
sociation, in love and in war, in sickness and death, in 
garlanding the marriage altar, in extending refreshment 
to friends, it has come to have a substantial pecuniary 
value. It takes little urging to persuade- the owner of a 
home or the possessor of a plot of ground to invest in a 
planting of garden Roses. 
With this standing of the Rose in the public mind it 
would seem a matter of real interest to the gentlemen of 
this association and of the nursery trade at large to find 
it not only interesting but profitable to increase your 
plantings of the Rose, and especially to disseminate the 
new and improved varieties. 
Our country is so wide in extent, and so variable as to 
climate, that Roses suited to one section may be absolute 
failures in others, hence the need of supplying suitable 
sm-ts for given localities. The knowledge necessary to 
make such selection requires long and careful study and 
can be made complete only by personal experiment, and 
in this experiment many points, considered singly or in 
various combinations, must be taken into account; no¬ 
tably drainage, composition of the soil, exposure, tein- 
perature, humidity and the behavior of the variety in 
response to these conditions. 
Climbers and Wichuraianas 
The climbers and the Wichuraianas should be better 
known, and their individual characteristics fully appre¬ 
ciated, for they succeed in nearly all sections of the coun¬ 
try except perhaps in portions of the Northwest and in 
the t'xtreme South; our present varieties in these two 
classes are the pioneers of garden planting among the 
masses of our people. However, varieties more resistant 
to severe cold are needed for the Dakotas and that lati¬ 
tude. In the South the tendency to continuous growth is 
apt to lessen the vitality of the Rose, but in the Gulf ter¬ 
ritory and in California, the climbing Teas and Noisettes 
jirove highly satisfactory. Lamarque, Gold of Ophir, Sol- 
farterre, Gloire de Dijon and that wonderful Rose, the 
Marechal Niel, with the climbing sports of certain Teas 
and H. T.’s like Kaiserin Augusta, Meteor and others, 
give a fine choice of color subjects in trellis Roses. 
These tender climbers suffered considerably in the ter¬ 
rible Winter of 1917-18, hut this Spring they are again a 
mass of bloom and brilliant color, reinstating themselves 
in the favor of all who love Roses. 
Some of the most satisfactory varieties in the hardy 
climbing section are Dorothy Perkins and White Dorothy, 
Dr. Van Fleet, Tausendschon, Excelsa, Mary Lovett, Sil¬ 
ver Moon, Ressie Lovett, Gardenia, American Pillar and 
Graf Zeppelin; this list could be extended considerably 
to include other excellent sorts. 
If I wished to make friends for the Rose—and inci¬ 
dentally for my own business—I should recommend to 
the novice the dwarf polyantha type of Rose for these 
invariably succeed even under adverse circumstances. 
They are hardy, wonderfully free in bloom and abso¬ 
lutely continuous bloomers up to the killing frosts about 
Thanksgiving Day in our Middle Western States; be¬ 
ginners in Rose culture should he urged to make their 
first experiments with these lovely bouiiuets of “baby” 
blooms. Among the true and tried are Erna Teschen- 
dorff. Mine. Levasseur, Catherine Zeimet, Mrs. Gutbush, 
Clotilde Soupert and Mine. Gouchault. 
What the Rose loving public demands are the “ever- 
bloomers,” and we may as well say at once that outside 
of the Polyanthas the "everbloomer” is an impossibility 
so far as the production of bloom during July and the 
first half of August is concerned. 
Teas and Hybrid Teas 
Among the Teas and Hybrid Teas, after the Hush of 
June bloom is past, there invariably comes an interval 
of rest, lasting until cooler nights herald the approach 
of Autumn; then comes the great show of the Summer, 
lasting till it is cut short by frost. After a most critical 
scrutiny of the tine collections at the Trial (lardens at 
Washington, D. C., the trial beds at Dreer’s Riverton (N. 
J.) place, John (Hook’s at Raltimore, Robbink & Atkins’ at 
Rutlierford, N. J., and other noted collections, the follow¬ 
ing 25 sorts seem to constitute the very finest of the Hy¬ 
brid Teas; in making uj) this list I have first of all con¬ 
sidered constitution and vigor, comhined with shapeliness 
of form, good color and free production of bud and bloom. 
Fragrance must be present for milady’s bouquet, but is 
not so essential where the mass of color is the aim, 
though Rose pi'rfume is a delight to the senses wherever 
its subtle fragrance is. The 25 H. T.’s for bedding are 
as follows: 
Radiance, Red Radiance, Lieutenant (Hlhaure, Hoosier 
Reality, Gen. MacArthur, Gruss i\n Teplitz, Geo. C. 
Waud, Janet, Indiana, Lady Ursula, Lady Ashtown, Mine. 
Caroline Ttestout, Konigin Garola, Mrs. Wakefield, 
Christie Miller, Mine. Jules Rouche, Lady Alice Stanley. 
Killarney Queen. Ophelia, Mrs. A. R. \Vaddell, Mary, 
Countess of Ilchester, Robin Hood. Columbia. Los An¬ 
geles, Duchess of Wellington, Dorothy Page Roberts. 
The varieties Win. R. Smith, Baldwin. Pink and White* 
Cochet, Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, Antoine Rivoire, Lady 
Hillingdon and Melanie Soupert will find a host of friends 
wherever climatic conditions favor their growth and de¬ 
velopment. 
The Hybrid Perpetual class is better known by the 
