Making a Rose Garden

Part 1

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MAKING A ROSE GARDEN

THE HOUSE & GARDEN MAKING BOOKS

It is the intention of the publishers to make this series of little volumes, of which Making a Rose Garden is one, a complete library of authoritative and well illustrated handbooks dealing with the activities of the home-maker and amateur gardener. Text, pictures and diagrams will, in each respective book, aim to make perfectly clear the possibility of having, and the means of having, some of the more important features of a modern country or suburban home. Among the titles already issued or planned for early publication are the following: Making a Lawn; Making a Tennis Court; Making a Garden Bloom This Year; Making a Fireplace; Making Roads and Paths; Making a Poultry House; Making a Hotbed and Cold-frame; Making Built-in Bookcases, Shelves and Seats; Making a Rock Garden; Making a Water Garden; Making a Perennial Border; Making a Shrubbery Group; Making a Naturalized Bulb Garden; with others to be announced later.

MAKING A ROSE GARDEN

By HENRY H. SAYLOR

NEW YORK McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY 1912

COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY McBRIDE, NAST & CO.

Published February, 1912

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 1

CLASSIFICATION 3

LOCATION AND SOIL 11

PREPARATION AND PLANTING 20

FERTILIZING 25

PRUNING 30

PESTS 38

PROPAGATION 40

WINTER PROTECTION 44

LISTS OF DEPENDABLE ROSES 46

GLOSSARY OF TERMS 51

THE ILLUSTRATIONS

A ROSE GARDEN WITH THE IDEAL ARRANGEMENT OF GRASS PATHS Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

ULRICH BRUNNER, A RED HYBRID PERPETUAL ROSE 4

MARECHAL NEIL, A TENDER CLIMBING TEA ROSE 8

KILLARNEY, ONE OF THE BEST HYBRID TEAS 12

Part 2

A GARDEN FOR ROSES ONLY 14

A DORMANT TEA ROSE AS IT COMES FROM THE GROWER 22

A STOCK OF MANETTI GRAFTED WITH AN IMPROVED VARIETY 42

A "STANDARD" ROSE 44

INTRODUCTION

I well remember the caution given me by a noted horticulturist when, in the sudden awakening to the joys of gardening, I was about to attempt the cultivation of nearly everything named in the largest seed and plant catalogue I could find:

"Leave the rose alone; it is not worth fighting for."

And leave it alone I did, until one day I was browsing about an old book shop and came upon a well-thumbed copy of good old Dean Hole's "A Book About Roses." Let me tell you that there is something radically wrong with the person who can read that book and then go on plodding along his dreary, roseless way.

But why, if there is such a book as that to be had, do I presume to put forth what can at best be but a feeble ray in its predecessor's blaze of inspiration? Merely because Dean Hole's book, and a later volume by the Rev. Andrew Foster-Melliar that is almost as inspiring, with perhaps even more helpful guidance, are both written for the English rosarian and for a cool, moist climate that necessitates a somewhat different method of procedure throughout as compared with that which would bring success in growing roses here in America. Then too, there is to my mind something encouraging in a very small book, a book that will merely attempt to lay the foundations for the superstructure that, after all, only experience can bring. Perhaps there are those who, like myself, are content with the bare essentials of classification, content to be told the basic rudiments of cultivation, and who are in haste to be done with all of these homely means to an end, that they may begin growing roses.

Making a Rose Garden

CLASSIFICATION

When one considers the fact that the majority of botanists recognize over a hundred species of the genus Rosa, and that a French botanist lists and describes 4,266 species from Europe and western Asia alone, it will readily be understood that this chapter can give but a rough, working knowledge of groups and species.

Fortunately the amateur rosarian in the United States is concerned with very few of the species, largely for the reason that the efforts of our rosegrowers have naturally been confined to a few important groups where general merit is most strongly marked. Indeed, for the purposes of a modest rose garden, one would not go far wrong if he limited his choice of varieties to the Hybrid Teas, Hybrid Perpetuals and a few of the Teas, with several of the wichuraiana and rugosa hybrids for trellis and hedge.

The name Hybrid Perpetual is borne by an enormous group of roses which have been derived from various species, crossed and recrossed until the parentage is in most cases hopelessly involved. The "Perpetual" half of the name signifies that the rose continues to bloom more or less frequently throughout the summer. As a matter of fact, it is usually less.

Teas or Tea-scented China roses form a distinct group that is readily recognized by the characteristic scent of the flowers and by the smoothness of its leaves. Teas are, in a way, the aristocrats of the rose garden. They bloom with no great blare of trumpets in June, like the Perpetuals, but they keep steadily at their work of producing exquisite blooms, one or two at a time, throughout the summer. Their one serious handicap is a lack of hardiness, which they possess only in a slight and very variable degree; and they must be very carefully protected in the north to bring them safely through the winter. Even though I were forced to buy new plants each spring, however, I would not have a rose garden without Teas.

Hybrid Teas, as the name signifies, are successful crosses between the Tea and roses in the Hybrid Perpetual group. This class combines the persistence of the Tea with the sturdier growth of the Perpetuals, and from it we shall probably get the great bulk of our garden roses for some years to come.

The Moss Rose, of which you will surely want a representative in your garden, belongs in the Provence group, as will be seen in the tabular classification at the end of this chapter. Who does not know its beautiful buds in their setting of mossy stems? This rose, like many a one that has not gotten such a grip on our affections, has refused steadfastly to mix its blood with another species, and has retained its good points and its bad ones for over three hundred years. It is quite hardy but is rather susceptible to mildew.

There are other roses, too, outside the larger and best-known groups--roses that, because of some superlative merit in one direction or because of past associations, lay a strong hand on our heart-strings and plead for an obscure corner of the new rose garden: the bristling Scotch Rose, the fragrant Damasks, the sweetbrier or eglantine with its inimitable fragrant foliage, the Penzance Brier Hybrids, the White Banksian of southern gardens with its odor of violets, the Persian Yellow of our grand-mothers' gardens, and the hundred-petaled Cabbage Rose, parent of the Moss.

Climbing roses are to be found in many of the groups--Wichuraiana, Ayrshire, Polyantha, Musk, Noisette and as sports in the Hybrid Perpetual, Tea and Hybrid Tea groups.

It is in another class, however, that we may look for the ideal American roses of the future. Not many years ago, came to us three natives of Japan, Rosa wichuraiana, Rosa multiflora and Rosa rugosa. From the first two has been developed by our American hybridizers the race of Ramblers, while from the third has come such sturdy children as Conrad F. Meyer, perhaps the ideal hedge rose for our northern climate. In the estimation of Professor Charles S. Sargent, the dean of American horticulture, it is along the line of rugosa hybrids that we shall succeed in filling our gardens with large, beautiful, hardy and continuously flowering roses.

The climate of the South and California seems ideally suited to the Teas, producing a wealth of exquisite bloom that fills those of us that live in more trying surroundings with envy. In the South also they have the Cherokee Rose (Rosa laevigata or sinica), flourishing along roadsides and in great masses on the prairies, its long, arching stems bearing a wealth of pure white, single flowers, four or five inches across, in a setting of brilliant, evergreen foliage. It is one of our American hybridizers' hopes and aims to cross this with a hardy rose to gain sufficient stamina for the North.

And out in Oregon, the Hybrid Perpetuals and Hybrid Teas grow to a size and beauty that is unsurpassed the world over. Practically every kind of rose can be grown in the Puget Sound district, and the amateurs of that locality seem to have as little trouble with rose pests as we do here with our hardy decorative shrubs.

To sum up the whole matter of classification and to show the relative positions of many groups that, for lack of space, have not even been mentioned above, the following tabular key is given--a slightly modified form of the classification given in the Cyclopedia of American Horticulture:

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