The Garden, You, And I Part 8

Evan, who has had a wide experience in watching the development of his plans, both by professional gardeners and amateurs, says that he is convinced more and more each day that, where transplanting of any sort fails, it is due to carelessness in the securing of the root anchors, rather than any fault of the dealer who supplies the plants, this of course applying particularly to all growths having woody roots, where breakage and wastage cannot be rapidly restored. When a rose is once established, its persistent roots may find means of boring through soil that in its first nonresistant state is impossible. While stiff, impervious clay is undesirable, a soil too loose with sand, that allows the bush to s.h.i.+ft with the wind, instead of holding it firmly, is quite as undesirable.

In planting all hardy or half-hardy roses,--whether they are of the type that flower once in early summer, the hybrid perpetuals that bloom freely in June and again at intervals during late summer and autumn, or the hybrid teas that, if wisely selected and protected, combine the wintering ability of their hardy parents with the monthly blooming cross of the teas,--it is best to plant dormant field-grown plants in October, or else as early in April as the ground is sufficiently dry and frost free.

These field-grown roses have better roots, and though, when planted in the spring, for the first few months the growth is apparently slower than that of the pot-grown bushes, it is much more normal and satisfactory, at least in the Middle and New England states of which I have knowledge.

All roses, even the st.u.r.dy, old-fas.h.i.+oned damasks, Madame Plantier, and the like, should have some covering in winter, such as stable litter of coa.r.s.e manure with the straw left in. Hybrid perpetuals I hill up well with earth after the manner of celery banked for bleaching, the trenches between making good water courses for snow water, while in spring cow manure and nitrate of soda is scattered in these ruts before the soil is restored to its level by forking.

The hybrid teas, of which La France is the best exponent, should be hilled up and then filled in between with evergreen branches, upland sedge gra.s.s, straw or corn stalks, and if you have the wherewithal, they may be capped with straw.

I do not care for leaves as a covering, unless something coa.r.s.e underlies them, for in wet seasons they form a cold and discouraging poultice to everything but the bob-tailed meadow mice, who love to bed and burrow under them. Such tea roses as it is possible to winter in the north should be treated in the same way, but there is something else to be suggested about their culture in another place.

The climbing roses of arbours, if in very exposed situations, in addition to the mulch of straw and manure, may have corn stalks stacked against the slats, which makes a windbreak well worth the trouble. But the more tender species of climbing roses should be grown upon pillars, English fas.h.i.+on. These can be snugly strawed up after the fas.h.i.+on of wine bottles, and then a conical cap of the waterproof tar paper used by builders drawn over the whole, the manure being banked up to hold the base firmly in place. With this device it is possible to grow the lovely Gloire de Dijon, in the open, that festoons the eaves of English cottages, but is our despair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PILLAR FOR CORNERS OF ROSE BED.]

Not long ago we invented an inexpensive "pillar" trellis for roses and vines which, standing seven feet high and built about a cedar clothes-pole, the end well coated with tar before setting, is both symmetrical and durable, not burning tender shoots, as do the metal affairs, and costing, if the material is bought and a carpenter hired by the day, the moderate price of two dollars and a half each, including paint, which should be dark green.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROSE GARDEN WITH OUTSIDE BORDER OF GRAVEL AND GRa.s.s.]

Evan has made a sketch of it for you. He finds it useful in many ways, and in laying out a new garden these pillars, set at corners or at intervals along the walks, serve to break the hot look of a wide expanse and give a certain formality that draws together without being too stiff and artificial.

For little gardens, like yours and mine, I think deep-green paint the best colour for pergola, pillars, seats, plant tubs, and the like. White paint is clean and cheerful, but stains easily. If one has the surroundings and money for marble columns and garden furniture, it must form part of a well-planned whole and not be pitched in at random, but the imitation article, compounded of cement or whitewashed wood, belongs in the region of stage properties or beer gardens!

The little plan I'm sending you needs a bit of ground not less than fifty feet by seventy-five for its development, and that, I think, is well within the limits of your southwest lawn. The pergola can be made of rough cedar posts with the bark left on. Evan says that there are any quant.i.ty of cedar trees in your river woods that are to be cleared for the reservoir, and you can probably get them for a song.

The border enclosing the gra.s.s plots is four feet in width, which allows you to reach into the centre from either side. Two rows of hybrid perpetuals or three of hybrid tea or summer roses can be planted in these beds, according to their size, thus allowing, at the minimum, for one hundred hybrid perpetuals, fifty hybrid teas, fifty summer roses, and eighteen climbers, nine on either side of the pergola, with four additional for the corner pillars.

The irregular beds in the small lawns should not be planted in set rows, but after the manner of shrubberies. Rugosa roses, if their colours be well chosen, are best for the centre of these beds. They are striking when in flower and decorative in fruit, while the handsome leaves, that are very free from insects, I find most useful as green in arranging other roses the foliage of which is scanty. The pink-and-white damask roses belong here, and the dear, profuse, and graceful Madame Plantier,--a dozen bushes of this hybrid China rose of seven leaflets are not too many. For seventy years it has held undisputed sway among hardy white roses and has become so much a part of old gardens that we are inclined to place its origin too far back in the past among historic roses, because we cannot imagine a time when it was not. This is a rose to pick by the armful, and grown in ma.s.ses it lends an air of luxury to the simplest garden.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MADAME PLANTIER AT VAN CORTLAND MANOR.]

Personally, I object to the rambler tribe of roses for any but large gardens, where in a certain sense the personality of flowers must sometimes be lost in decorative effect. A scentless rose has no right to intrude on the tender intimacies of the woman's garden, but pruned back to a tall standard it may be cautiously mingled with Madame Plantier with good effect, lending the pale lady the reflected touch of the colour that gives life.

For the pergola a few ramblers may be used for rapid effect, while the slower growing varieties are making wood, but sooner or later I'm sure that they will disappear before more friendly roses, and even to-day the old-fas.h.i.+oned Gem of the Prairies, Felicite Perpetual, and Baltimore Belle seem to me worthier. Colour and profusion the rambler has, but equally so has the torrent of coloured paper flowers that pours out of the juggler's hat, and they are much bigger.

No, I'm apt to be emphatic (Evan calls it pertinacious), but I'm sure the time will come when at least the crimson rambler, trained over a gas-pipe arch, except for purely decorative purposes, will be as much disliked by the real rose lover as the tripod with the iron pot painted red and filled with red geraniums!

The English sweetbrier is a climbing or pillar rose, capable of being pruned into a bush or hedge that not only gives fragrance in June but every time the rain falls or dew condenses upon its magic leaves.

This you must have as well as some of its kin, the Penzance hybrid-sweetbriers, either against the pergola or trained to the corner pillars, where you will become more intimate with them.

You may be fairly sure of success in wintering well-chosen hybrid perpetual roses and the hybrid teas. If, for any reason, certain varieties that succeed in Lavinia Cortright's garden and ours do not thrive with you, they must be replaced by a gradual process of elimination. You alone may judge of this. I'm simply giving you a list of varieties that have thriven in my garden; others may not find them the best. Only let me advise you to begin with roses that have stood a test of not less than half a dozen years, for it really takes that long to know the influence of heredity in this highly specialized race. After the rose garden has shown you all its colours, it is easy to supplement a needed tint here or a proven newcomer there without speculating, as it were, in garden stock in a bull market. Too much of spending money for something that two years hence will be known no more is a financial side of the _Garden-Goozle_ question that saddens the commuter, as well as his wife. It is a continual proof of man's, and particularly woman's, innocency that such pictures as horticultural pedlers show when extolling their wares do not deter instead of encouraging purchasers. If the fruits and flowers were believable, as depicted, still they should be unattractive to eye and palate.

The hybrid perpetuals give their great yield in June, followed by a more or less scattering autumn blooming. It is foolish to expect a rose specialized and proven by the tests climatic and otherwise of Holland, England, or France, and p.r.o.nounced a perpetual bloomer, to live up to its reputation in this country of sudden extremes: unveiled summer heat, that forces the bud open before it has developed quality, causing certain shades of pink and crimson to fade and flatten before the flower is really fit for gathering. Americans in general must be content with the half loaf, as far as garden roses are concerned, for in the cooler parts of the country, where the development of the flower is slower and more satisfactory, the winter lends added dangers.

Good roses--not, however, the perfect flowers of the connoisseur or even of the cottage exhibitions of England--may be had from early June until the first week of July, but the hybrid tea roses that brave the latter part of that month and August are but short lived, even when gathered in the bud. Those known as summer bedders of the Bourbon cla.s.s, chiefly scentless, of which Appoline is a well-known example, are simply bits of decorative colour without the endearing attributes of roses, and garden colour may be obtained with far less labour.

In July and August you may safely let your eyes wander from the rosary to the beds of summer annuals, the gladioli, j.a.pan lilies, and Dahlias, and depend for fragrance on your bed of sweet odours. But as the nights begin to lengthen, at the end of August, you may prepare for a tea-rose festival, if you have a little forethought and a very little money.

You have, I think, a florist in your neighbourhood who raises roses for the market. This is my method, practised for many years with comforting success. Instead of buying pot-grown tea roses in April or May, that, unless a good price (from twenty-five cents up) is paid for them, will be so small that they can only be called bushes at the season's end, I go to our florist and buy fifty of the bushes that he has forced during the winter and being considered spent are cast out about June first, in order to fill in the new stock.

All such roses are not discarded each season, but the process is carried on in alternate benches and years, so that there are always some to be obtained. These plants, big, tired-looking, and weak in the branches, I buy for the nominal sum of ten dollars per hundred, five dollars' worth filling a long border when set out in alternating rows. On taking these home, I thin out the woodiest shoots, or those that interfere, and plant deep in the border, into which nitrate of soda has been dug in the proportion of about two ounces to a plant.

After spreading out the roots as carefully as possible, I plant firmly and water thoroughly, but do not as yet prune off the long branches. In ten days, having given meanwhile two waterings of liquid manure, I prune the bushes back sharply. By this time they will have probably dropped the greater part of their leaves, and having had a short but sufficient nap, are ready to grow, which they proceed to do freely. I do not encourage bloom in July, but as soon as we have dew-heavy August nights it begins and goes on, increasing in quality until hard frost. Many of these bushes have wintered comfortably and on being pruned to within three inches of the ground have lasted many years.

As to the varieties so treated, that is a secondary consideration, for under these circ.u.mstances you must take what the florist has to offer, which will of course be those most suitable to the winter market. I have used Perle des Jardins, Catherine Mermet, Bride and Bridesmaid, Safrano, Souvenir d'un Ami, and Bon Silene (the rose for b.u.t.ton-hole buds) with equal success, though a very intelligent grower affirms that both Bride and Bridesmaid are unsatisfactory as outdoor roses.

I do not say that the individual flowers from these bushes bear relation to the perfect specimens of greenhouse growth in anything but fragrance, but in this way I have roses all the autumn, "by the fistful," as Timothy Saunders's Scotch appreciation of values puts it, though his spouse, Martha Corkle, whose home memories are usually expanded by the perspective of time and absence, in this case speaks truly when she says on receiving a handful, "Yes, Mrs. Evan, they're nice and sweetish and I thank you kindly, but, ma'am, they couldn't stand in it with those that grows as free as corn poppies round the four-s.h.i.+llin'-a-week cottages out Gloucester way, and _no_ disrespec' intended."

The working season of the rose garden begins the first of April with the cutting out of dead wood and the shortening and shaping of last year's growth. With hardy roses the flowers come from fresh twigs on old growth. I never prune in the autumn, because winter always kills a bit of the top and cutting opens the tubular stem to the weather and induces decay. Pruning is a science in itself, to be learned by experience. This is the formula that I once wrote on a slate and kept in my attic desk with my first _Boke of the Garden_.

_April 1._ Uncover bushes, prune, and have the winter mulch thoroughly dug in. Place stakes in the centre of bushes that you know from experience will need them. Re-tie climbers that have broken away from supports, but not too tightly; let some sprays swing and arch in their own way.

_May._ As soon as the foliage begins to appear, spray with whale-oil soap lotion mixed hot and let cool: strength--a bit the size of a walnut to a gallon of water. Do this every two weeks until the rosebuds show decided colour, then stop. This is to keep the rose Aphis at bay, the little soft green fly that is as succulent as the sap upon which it feeds.

If the spring is damp and mildew appears, dust with sulphur flower in a small bellows.

_June._ The Rose Hopper or Thrip, an active little pale yellow, transparent-winged insect that clings to the under side of the leaf, will now come if the weather is dry; dislodged easily by shaking, it immediately returns. _Remedy_, spraying leaves from underneath with water and applying powdered helebore with a bellows.

If _Black Spot_, a rather recent nuisance, appears on the leaves, spray with Bordeaux Mixture, bought of a horticultural dealer, directions accompanying.

Meanwhile the leaf worm is sure to put in appearance. This is also transparent and either brownish green, or yellow, seemingly according to the leaves upon which it feeds. _Remedy_, if they won't yield to helebore (and they seldom do unless very sickly), brush them off into a cup. An old shaving brush is good for this purpose, as it is close set but too soft to sc.r.a.pe the leaf.

_June 15._ When the roses are in bloom, stop all insecticides. There is such a thing as the cure being worse than the disease, and a rose garden redolent of whale-oil soap and phosphates and encrusted with helebore and Bordeaux Mixture has a painful suggestion of a horticultural hospital.

Now is the time for the Rose Chafer, a dull brownish beetle about half an inch long, who times his coming up out of the ground to feast upon the most fragrant and luscious roses. These hunt in couples and are wholly obnoxious. Picking into a fruit jar with a little kerosene in the bottom is the only way to kill them. In one day last season Evan came to my rescue and filled a quart jar in two hours; they are so fat and s.p.u.n.ky they may be considered as the big game among garden bugs, and their catching, if not carried to an extreme, in the light of sport.

_July._ See that all dead flowers are cut off and no petals allowed to mould on the ground. Mulch with short gra.s.s during hot, dry weather, and use liquid manure upon hybrid teas and teas every two weeks, immediately after watering or a rain. Never, at any season, allow a rose to wither on the bus.h.!.+

_August._ The same, keeping on the watch for all previous insects but the rose beetle; this will have left. Mulch hybrid perpetuals if a dry season, and give liquid manure for the second blooming.

_September._ Stir the ground after heavy rains, and watch for tendencies of mould.

_October._ The same.

_November._ Begin to draw the soil about roots soon after black frost, and bank up before the ground freezes, but do not add straw, litter, or manure in the trenches until the ground is actually frozen, which will be from December first onward, except in the case of teas, which should be covered gradually until the top is reached.

By this you will judge, Mary Penrose, that a rosary has its labours, as well as pleasures, and that like all other joys it is accompanied by difficulties. Yet you can grow good roses if you _will_, but the difficulty is that most people _won't_. I think, by the way, that remark belongs to Dean Hole of fragrant rose-garden memory, and of a truth he has said all that is likely to be spoken or written about the rose on the side of both knowledge and human fancy for many a day.

Modern roses of the hybrid-perpetual and hybrid-tea types may be bought of several reliable dealers for twenty-five dollars per hundred, in two conditions, either grown on their own roots or budded on Manette or brier stock. Personally I prefer the first or natural condition, if the const.i.tution of the plant is sufficiently vigorous to warrant it. There are, however, many indispensable varieties that do better for the infusion of vigorous brier blood. A budded rose will show the junction by a little k.n.o.b where the bud was inserted; this must be planted at least three inches below ground so that new shoots will be encouraged to spring from _above_ the bud, as those below are merely wild, worthless suckers, to be removed as soon as they appear.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CONVENIENT ROSE BED.]

How can you tell wild suckers from the desired growth? At first by following them back to the root until you have taken their measure, but as soon as experience has enlightened you they will be as easily recognized at sight as the mongrel dog by a connoisseur. Many admirable varieties, like Jacqueminot, Anne de Diesbach, Alfred Colomb, Madame Plantier, and all the climbers, do so well on their own roots that it is foolish to take the risk of budded plants, the worse side of which is a tendency to decay at the point of juncture. Tea roses, being of rapid growth and flowering wholly upon new wood, are perfectly satisfactory when rooted from cuttings.

Of many well-attested varieties of hybrid perpetuals, hybrid China, or other so-called June roses, you may at the start safely select from the following twenty.