THE BOOK OF THE ROSE.* IT seems almost incongruous to
be discussing a new rose- book in the middle of winter, and we feel inclined to say with B iron :—
"At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow on May's new-fangled earth, But like of each thing that in season grows ;"
but we have changed all that nowadays, and if Shakespeare could once more walk among us, he would doubtless admire the baskets of roses offered for sale in London streets in spite of frosty nights and powderings of snow. The cultivation and the demand for roses is a feature of the present day,— theorists would point to it as the result of education ; with a more universal knowledge of the beauties of nature comes a more universal wish to share in those beauties. Flowers are sought after and sold that twenty years ago even bloomed " unnoticed, save by God ; " and the queen of flowers has a special cult of her own. There are many good practical books about roses already, but there always seems room for another on the shelves of garden-lovers. Each year brings fresh information, new varieties are tested and proved, new Hybrid Perpetuals or Teas come to the front, and older favourites are superseded. When the first Descriptive Catalogue of Roses was published in 1834, it enumerated four hundred and seventy-eight named varieties. Writing in 1869, Dean Hole (surely by acclamation the "Grand Prior of the Order of the Rose ") says that only eleven of the four hundred and seventy- eight survived in the Catalogue of that year, and he wonders if the same process of elimination will occur thirty-five years • The Book of the ;Boee. By the Rev. A. Foster-Melli Ir, M A. London : Macmillan and Co. later. In a somewhat hasty comparison between the summary of the one hundred and twenty-eight best varieties for exhibi- tion given in Dean Hole's Book about Roses, and the lists
given by the Rev. A. Fosteral.elliar, we find only about fifty of those mentioned in the earlier list surviving in the later book, so that in twenty-five years more than half of the roses
recommended by the Dean have dropped out of notice. Some still hold their own, and are firmly established favourites,—
such as Gloire de Dijon, Devoniensis, and La France. In 1869, Marechal Niel was a comparatively new and untried garden-rose, and it was uncertain whether it would endure the ordeal of a severe winter—Mr. Foster-Melliar pronounces it decidedly tender—though in some localities it will live through an ordinary winter if protected by a warm brick wall. The value of walls as affording support and protection to roses is recognised by all rosarians; the latest chronicler of the queen of flowers says :—" No wall should be neglected. I have grown the best of Teas on the low wall surrounding a deeply gravelled stable-yard, and have won a medal with Souvenir d'Elise from this hopeless-looking place." And it is
with the same love of beautifying odd corners that Mr. Alfred Austin, the laureate of gardens, writes :—" I grow all my Gloires de Dijon along a fence in the stable-yard. Why should stable-yards not have flowers to beautify them as well as more romantic-sounding nooks and corners ?" And in the Book about Roses we find the same advice :—" Upon
your house, between fruit-trees, wherever you have a vacant mural space, there put in a Tea Rose."
Mr. Foster-Melliar has a good many suggestions to offer as to the situation and soil most suitable for the growing of roses ; but he ends by telling us that in his own case he has battled successfully with most of the difficulties he mentions : —" In many cases, however, the would-be grower of Roses has no choice of a situation, but has to make the best of the ground at his disposal ; and as I have to grow my own Roses in just such a situation as I have been describing as the worst of all, viz., at the bottom of a valley, near a river, hardly above the level of the water-meadows, only thirty feet above sea-level, and, moreover, surrounded by large trees ; I can fully sympathise with anyone in such a position." The
Book of the Rose is written by an amateur for amateurs, and the directions given are therefore full and detailed, and, as a rule, very clearly put forth. Situation is often a problem that solves itself, and the unfavourable surroundings must be made the best of, but such matters as planting, manuring, and pruning are entirely in the hands of gardeners, and it is therefore to these chapters that amateurs will naturally turn for instruction. To begin with, a stock of enthusiasm is necessary. Mr. Foster-Melliar is an enthusiast himself in everything connected with roses, from the grubbing-up of stocks in the hedgerows to the final arrangement of the blooms for exhibition. As he says in his introduction :— "I write for enthusiasts, for those who make a regular hobby of their Roses, and think of them as fondly and almost as fully in January as in June. There are not a few such, even among amateurs, in all ranks, and some of them, much handicapped perhaps by soil, situation or circumstances, still retain their ardour, though not meeting with much success The man of business who rises at daybreak to attend to his Roses before his day's work in the town, who is quite prepared, if necessary, to go out with a good lantern on a November night to seize a favourable condition of soil for planting at once some newly arrived standards or dwarfs, and who, later in the winter, will turn out in the snow after dark to give some little extra protection that may be required for his beds,—this is the sort of man for me, and for the Rose as well."
Mr. Foster-Melliar has devoted a good deal of study to the scientific feeding of roses. His remarks on the advantages of liquid manure are admirable, and he justly says (p. 71) :—" By liquid manure we can reach all the roots at once without disturbing them in the actual time of their most vigorous growth ; and we can supply the Rose with what it wants,— soil thoroughly stored with food ready cooked as it were for immediate absorption, rather than solid manure in the soil which may or may not have all the materials ready in a soluble state." The chapter on " Pruning " is full of practical hints, and it disposes of the arguments sometimes brought forward in favour of slight pruning. We, however, feel in- clined to question the axiom that "March is the month for pruning all Roses in the open but Teas and Noisettes." There ars few localities in England where it is safe to prune rases in March except in very exceptional years. We should say that the advice to leave Tea Roses in the open undisturbed in their winter bedclothes till April, applies also to Hybrid Perpetuals in most parts of England. Amateurs will be able to study the differ- ence in pruning for exhibition and pruning for ordinary purposes. In the former case everything is sacrificed to ob- taining a few show-flowers :—"Pruning in this case loses most of its art; only the strongest shoots will be retained, and these will be cut back very closely to two or three buds, while with weak growers in some cases not more than one bud of new wood will be retained." In the remarks on "Rose-Growing under Glass," we regret that the author does not suggest any practical plan for the construction of a rose-house, where roses would be planted in beds. He speaks of a cool house, where the roof, "and indeed as much as possible of the structure, can be entirely removed by the middle of June," but he does not say how such a wholesale removal is to be practically effected. The directions for growing roses either in pots or planted in the ground under glass are somewhat confused, and we wish the chapter could have been divided in half, and more space given to directions for growing roses in the ground. For example, the amount of watering must be entirely different, as roses grown in pots are turned out of doors in the summer to enjoy dews and showers and fresh air. We should have been glad of more directions as to watering the roots of roses planted in the soil; it is not sufficient to be told that " the uninitiated would probably err in keeping the plants in pots too dry," or that "there is considerable danger in overwatering forced roses in pots when the growth is young." The same fault may be found with other Rose-books, not excepting those of Mr. William Paul and Mr. Gilmour, the attention of rosarians seems to be more turned to roses grown in pots than to roses grown in beds under glass. The hints on planting roses in the open are to be commended to amateurs, while the chapter on "Manners and Customs" is an original method of cataloguing roses, and is full of useful information.
It takes time and dearly bought experience for beginners to learn to discount what Mr. Foster-Melliar calls "catalogue English." He says :—" In this language ' medium-sized ' means small,' and 'pretty' generally implies the same. In growth, 'moderate' means weakly," free ' describes a plant which is rather weakly but branching, and 'vigorous' stands for ordinary growth. A good pot-rose' might very likely mean that it would not stand any bad weather out of doors, a 'nearly full' one shows an eye; and we should probably be doing no injustice in supposing that a rose which is good when caught right' is bad as a rule." There is also a biographical rose-language that must always produce a sense of the unexpected in the mind of an uninitiated outsider who reads that " Spenser " is a "stouter and fuller Baroness Roths- child," and that "Sultan of Zanzibar" is "similar in wood and habit to Duke of Edinburgh and Reynolds Hole, but a weaker growth with a very bad constitution." Lovers of the abnormal will rejoice in such educated monstrosities as green roses ; but it is to be hoped that they will not become common ; we would rather by far go back to the old-fashioned damask and French roses that have bloomed in this country for over three hundred years, red and white, sweet-scented, the typical flower of England, or to the old-fashioned China rose, with its modest pink blooms, flowering early and late alike in cottage or palace garden.
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