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 ch