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Mabel Osgood Wright - The Garden, You, and I

M >> Mabel Osgood Wright >> The Garden, You, and I




[Illustration: MY ROSES ARE SCATTERED HERE, THERE, AND
EVERYWHERE.]

But this is the time and hour that one gardener, on a very modest scale,
may be excused if she overrates the charms of rose possessing, for it is
a June morning, both bright and overcast by turns. A wood thrush is
practising his arpegios in the little cedar copse on one side, and a
catbird is hurling every sort of vocal challenge and bedevilment from
his ancestral syringa bush on the other, and all between is a gap filled
with a vista of rose-bushes--not marshalled in a garden together, but
scattered here, there, and everywhere that a good exposure and deep
foothold could be found.

As far as the arrangement of my roses is concerned, "do as I say, not as
I do" is a most convenient motto. I have tried to formalize my roses
these ten years past, but how can I, for my yellow brier (Harrison's)
has followed its own sweet will so long that it makes almost a hedge.
The Madame Plantiers of mother's garden are stalwart shrubs, like many
other nameless bushes collected from old gardens hereabout, one
declining so persistently to be uprooted from a particularly cheerful
corner that it finds itself in the modern company of Japanese iris, and
inadvertently sheds its petals to make rose-water of the birds' bath.

An English sweetbrier of delicious leafage hobnobs with honeysuckle and
clematis on one of the wren arbours, while a great nameless bush of
exquisite blush buds, quite destitute of thorns (one of the many
cuttings sent "the Doctor's wife" in the long ago), stands an
unconscious chaperone between Marshall P. Wilder and Mrs. John Lang.

I must at once confess that it is much better to keep the roses apart in
long borders of a kind than to scatter them at random. By so doing the
plants can be easily reached from either side, more care being taken not
to overshadow the dwarf varieties by the more vigorous.

Lavinia Cortright has left the old-fashioned June roses that belonged to
her garden where they were, but is now gathering the new hybrids after
the manner of Evan's little plan. In this way, without venturing into
roses from a collector's standpoint, she can have representatives of the
best groups and a continuous supply of buds of some sort both outdoors
and for the house from the first week in June until winter.

To begin with, roses need plenty of air. This does not mean that they
flourish in a draught made by the rushing of north or east wind between
buildings or down a cut or roadway. If roses are set in a mixed border,
the tendency is inevitably to crowd or flank them by some succulent
annual that overgrows the limit we mentally set for it, thereby stopping
the circulation of air about the rose roots, and lo! the harm is done!

If you want good roses, you must be content to see a little bare, brown
earth between the bushes, only allowing a narrow outside border of
pansies, the horned bedding violets (_cornuta_), or some equally compact
and clean-growing flower. To plant anything thickly between the roses
themselves prevents stirring the soil and the necessary seasonal
mulchings, for if the ground-covering plants flourish you will dislike
to disturb them.

The first thing to secure for your rosary is sun--sun for all the
morning. If the shadow of house, barn, or of distant trees breaks the
direct afternoon rays in July and August, so much the better, but no
overhead shade at any time or season. This does not prevent your
protecting a particularly fine quantity of buds, needed for some special
occasion, with a tentlike umbrella, such as one sees fastened to the
seat in pedlers' wagons. A pair of these same umbrellas are almost a
horticultural necessity for the gardener's comfort as well, when she
sits on her rubber mat to transplant and weed.

Given your location, consideration of soil comes next, for this can be
controlled in a way in which the sun may not be, though if the ground
chosen is in the bottom of a hollow or in a place where surface water is
likely to settle in winter, you had better shift the location without
more ado. It was a remark pertinent to all such places that Dean Hole
made to the titled lady who showed him an elaborately planned rose
garden, in a hollow, and waited for his praise. She heard only the
remark that it was an admirable spot for _ferns_!

If your soil is clayey, and holds water for this reason, it can be
drained by porous tiles, sunk at intervals in the same way as meadow or
hay land would be drained, that is if the size of your garden and the
lay of the land warrants it. If, however, the roses are to be in
separate beds or long borders, the earth can be dug out to the depth of
two and a half or three feet, the good fertile portion being put on one
side and the clay or yellow loam, if any there be, removed. Then fill
the hole with cobblestones, rubbish of old plaster, etc., for a foot in
depth (never tin cans); mix the good earth thoroughly with one-third its
bulk of well-rotted cow dung, a generous sprinkling of unslaked lime and
sulphur, and replace, leaving it to settle for a few days and watering
it thoroughly, if it does not rain, before planting.

One of the advantages of planting roses by themselves is that the
stirring of the soil and giving of special fertilizers when needful may
be unhampered.

In the ordinary planting of roses by the novice, the most necessary
rules are usually the first violated. The roses are generally purchased
in pots, with a certain amount of foliage and a few buds produced by
forcing. A hole is excavated, we will suppose, in a hardened border of
hardy plants that, owing to the tangle of roots, can be at best but
superficially dug and must rely upon top dressing for its nutriment.
Owing to the difficulty of digging the hole, it is likely to be a tight
fit for the pot-bound ball of calloused roots that is to fill it. Hence,
instead of the woody roots and delicate fibres being carefully spread
out and covered, so that each one is surrounded by fresh earth, they are
jammed just as they are (or often with an additional squeeze) into a
rigid socket, and small wonder if the conjunction of the two results in
blighting and a lingering death rather than the renewal of vitality and
increase.

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 shift 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 sturdy, old-fashioned damasks, Madame Plantier, and
the like, should have some covering in winter, such as stable litter of
coarse 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 grass, 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 coarse
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 fashion. These can be snugly strawed up after the fashion 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: ROSE GARDEN WITH OUTSIDE BORDER OF GRAVEL AND
GRASS.]

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
quantity 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 grass 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 masses it lends an air of
luxury to the simplest garden.

[Illustration: 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-fashioned 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 pronounced 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 class,
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, Japan 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 circumstances 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 button-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-shillin'-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 scrape 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 spunky 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 grass 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 bush!

_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
constitution 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 knob 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.

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