rs are taken
from the shoots, and, if any are forgotten, February and March will be
the most favourable month for the operation: as a general rule, July is
the proper season."

[Illustration: RUGOSA.

ROSA ALBA.]

CHAPTER III

SUMMER-FLOWERING ROSES--OLD AND NEW.

LET us now consider those roses which, although their lovely season of
blooming is but short, shed such fragrance and delight on the gardens of
rich and poor. Our oldest favourites first--the Cabbage, sweetest of
all; the Moss; the Maiden's Blush; the Crimson Damask; the Austrian,
Scotch, and Sweet Briars; the tiny _Rose de Meaux_, so seldom seen now
in England that when we find bunches of it on every barrow in the Paris
streets, to be had for a few centimes, we fall upon it as on lost
treasure.

Then the climbers, the Ayrshires, Banksias, Polyanthas and Evergreen.
And when to these we add all the novelties which Japan has bestowed upon
us in the Rugosas and the Wichuraianas, and those marvels which the
hybridists are deriving from them and introducing every year in such
numbers, we may well consider where best to make a place for these
lovely roses, so that from April till August we can rejoice in their
varied beauty.

Of the climbing roses I treat in a separate chapter. But if with regard
to the dwarf or bush roses, some may raise objections to massing them
in by themselves, because they are so soon out of flower and leave the
beds bare of bloom for the rest of the summer, the objection--a valid
one--may be overcome in two ways. First, by planting China roses among
them and an edging of the charming Dwarf Polyantha roses round them.
Secondly, by planting lilies and late-flowering perennials with them,
which will be in bloom as soon as they are over.

But to my mind, the Cabbage, Moss, Provence and Damask roses look most
thoroughly in place in the old-fashioned mixed border along the walk in
the kitchen garden, where they flower after wallflowers, daffodils and
polyanthus, with lilies and pinks, stocks and carnations, and all the
delightful and fragrant odds and ends that, somehow, make it the spot in
the whole garden to which all footsteps turn instinctively.

[Illustration: PROVENCE.

CABBAGE.]

THE PROVENCE OR CABBAGE ROSE, _R. centifolia_,

is perhaps the oldest favourite in English gardens; for it was
introduced as far back as 1596. Said to have come originally from the
Caucasus, it may well be, as its Latin and French names su