THOSE who follow the developments of taste in modern gardening, cannot fail to perceive how great has been the recent increase in the numbers of Roses that are for true beauty in the garden.
It is only some of the elders among those who take a true and lively interest in their gardens who know what a scarcity of good things there was thirty years ago, or even twenty, compared with what we have now to choose from. Still, of the Roses commonly known as garden Roses, there were even then China Roses, Damask, Cabbage and Moss, Sweetbriars and Cinnamon Roses, and the free-growing Ayrshires, which are even now among the most indispensable.
But the wave of indifferent taste in gardening that had flooded all England with the desire for summer bedding plants, to the almost entire exclusion of the worthier occupants of gardens, had for a time pushed aside the older garden Roses. For whereas in the earlier half of the nineteenth century these good old Roses were much planted and worthily used, with the coming of the fashion for the tender bedding plants they fell into general disuse; and, with the accompanying neglect of many a good hardy border plant, left our gardens very much the poorer, and, except for special spring bedding, bare of flowers for all the earlier part of the year.
Now we have learnt the better ways, and have come to see that good gardening is based on something more stable and trustworthy than any passing freak of fashion. And though the foolish imp fashion will always pounce upon something to tease and worry over, and to set up on a temporary pedestal only to be pulled down again before long, so also it assails and would make its own for a time, some one or other point of garden practice. Just now it is the pergola and the Japanese garden; and truly wonderful are the absurdities committed in the name of both.
But the sober, thoughtful gardener smiles within himself and lets the freaks of fashion pass by. If he has some level place where a straight covered way of summer greenery would lead pleasantly from one quite definite point to another, and if he feels quite sure that his garden-scheme and its environment will be the better for it, and if he can afford to build a sensible structure, with solid piers and heavy oak beams, he will do well to have a pergola. If he has travelled in Japan, and lived there for some time and acquired the language, and has deeply studied the mental attitude of the people with regard to their gardens, and imbibed the traditional lore so closely bound up with their horticultural practice, and is also a practical gardener in England—then let him make a Japanese garden, if he will and can; but he will be the wiser man if he lets it alone. Even with all the knowledge indicated, and, indeed, because of its acquirement, he probably would not attempt it. When a Japanese garden merely means a space of pleasure-ground where plants, natives of Japan, are grown in a manner suitable for an English garden, there is but little danger of going wrong, but such danger is considerable when an attempt is made to garden in the Japanese manner.
This is a wide digression from the subject of garden Roses, and yet excusable in that it can scarcely be too often urged that any attempt to practise anything in horticulture for no better reason than because it is the fashion, can only lead to debasement and can only achieve futility.
Now that there are large numbers of people who truly love their gardens, and who show evidence of it by giving them much care and thought and loving labour, the old garden Roses have been sought for and have been restored to their former place of high favour. And our best nurserymen have not been slow to see what would be acceptable in well-cared-for gardens throughout the length and breadth of the land; so that the last few years have seen an extraordinary activity in the production of good Roses for garden effect. The free-growing Rosa polyantha of the Himalayas has been employed as a seed or pollen-bearing parent, and from it have been developed first the well-known Crimson
“VISCOUNTESS FOLKESTONE”
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF
MR. R. CLARKE EDWARDS
Rambler, and later a number of less showy but much more refined flowers of just the right kind for free use in garden decoration.
Valuable hybrids have also been raised from the Tea Roses, one of the best known of them being Viscountess Folkestone, the subject of the picture; a grand Rose for grouping in beds or clumps, and one that yields its large, loose, blush-white flowers abundantly and for a long season. This merit of an extended blooming season runs through the greater number of the now long list of varieties of the beautiful hybrid Teas.
Some of the new seedling Tea Roses have nearly single flowers, and are none the less beautiful, as those wise folk well know who grow Corallina and the lovely white Irish Beauty, and its free-blooming companion Irish Glory. These also are plants that will succeed, as will most of the hybrid Teas, in some poor hot soils where most Roses fail.
Then for rambling over banks we have Rosa wichuraiana and its descendants; among these the charming Dorothy Perkins, good for any free use.
Those who garden on the strong, rich loams that Roses love will find that many of the so-called show Roses are grand things as garden Roses also; indeed, for purely horticultural purposes there is no need of any such distinction. The way is for a number of Roses to be grown on trial, and for a keen watch to be kept on their ways. It will soon be seen which are those that are happiest in any particular garden, and how, having regard to their colour and way of growth, they may best be used for beauty and delight.
In the garden where the picture was painted, Viscountess Folkestone has an undergrowth of Love-in-a-mist, that comes up year after year, and with its quiet grey-blue colouring makes a charming companionship with the faint blush of the Roses.
