While the process is painfully slow and impatience great, 
our testing program gives us each year, ‘new’ and lovely 
sorts which soon we can share with you. This list will be 
changing constantly—adding, improving, omitting. 
I have yielded finally to much pressure, by giving herein, 
an estimate of the comparative growth habit, as an aid to 
planting. Unfortunately for the deadly accuracy which some 
require, rose performance cannot be stated in “feet and 
inches.” 
Pruning of the old roses is so different from hybrid teas it 
should be mentioned here. For the Hybrid Perpetuals, I 
refer you to the experienced advice of Richard Thomson, see 
page 40. For Mosses, the catalog-writer has expounded at 
length in the introduction to them, page 42. The Briers, Musks 
and Rugosas shiver at the sight of pruning shears... give 
them room when you plant and enjoy the bigness of them. 
The others will not sulk if you snip here and there, when 
space is limited and they are getting out of bounds, but they 
will be happier if you don't. 
Old roses, as a class, excepting the Teas, Chinas and 
Noisettes, are hardier, definitely, than their modern, inbred 
off-spring. We have endeavored to make clear their individ- 
ual characteristics in the variety descriptions. There are 
many kinds among them for every climate south of the Arctic 
Circle and many which will need little if any winter pro- 
tection. 
It is amusing and we confess, sometimes a little annoying 
to be told on occasion— ‘Oh I don't like old roses—the flowers 
are small, and come in clusters and besides they only bloom 
once!’ We are reminded of Artemus Ward's Definition of 
Ignorance—' Knowin' so many things that ain't so.” In the 
great variation of types you will find everything in rose- 
beauty from the petite mignon to the great, lush blooms of the 
hybrid perpetuals—from the loveliest of soft lilac-pinks, to 
the darkest, richest reds. Some whose lavish bloom is a 
spring delight—others which flower abundantly all season. 
No rose-garden, large or small, but that would be made 
more beautiful, more fragrant, and more interesting, by a 
planting of “old-roses” in the background of your hybrid 
| teas and floribundas. 
“The New Roses are for admiring, the old ones for loving.” 
