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
[Illustration: “VISCOUNTESS FOLKESTONE”