Since the remarks in our article on Roses, on the impossibility of
growing these in this climate, were written, the following notes on this
subject by one who evidently speaks from personal experience have
attracted our attention, and we give them a place here because it is
desirable that the public should be made acquainted with the fact that
they have been tried many years ago, and found to be a failure in such a
climate as ours. In a picture, the tree-rose laden with roses of several
colors, or gracefully drooping, like a weeping tree, under its burden of
pink, and scarlet, and yellow blooms, looks beautiful, and the
expenditure of from three to five dollars to possess such an ornament to
one’s grounds seems reasonable, but it is well to know that at best in a
year or two it will fail. Our writer says, much as I admire those
beautiful things, standard or tree-roses, I am afraid they will never
become really established in our gardens, or do us much good in the long
run. I have had in my garden and on my lawn about fifty specimens. They
were all, but ten, imported plants, got out by a neighbor of mine at
different times within five years. Little by little they have all died
off. At first they thrived and bloomed very well. Afterwards they were
gradually affected by the winters, and one after another I lost them.
Then again, I fancy that our summers are too hot for the tall naked
stems. They seem to get dry and shrivelled, and thereby they affect the
growth and health of the top. I am all the more convinced of this since
I have seen some specimens grown by a neighbor. He covers the stem with
moss bound around them. This he leaves on all the year. It undeniably
gives more health and vigor to the head, but it also gives the whole
tree-rose, so unsightly, bandaged, a look that I cannot endure it in a
neat place. On the whole, therefore, I shall feel obliged to return to
the old, and in the main more satisfactory mode of growing roses.
Farther south, say at Baltimore or Cincinnati, where the weather is not
so cold in winter, no doubt standard roses will do better.
[Illustration: The Canadian Horticulturist]
=VOL. I.]= =AUGUST, 1878.= =[NO. 8.=