Roses for amateurs

a practical guide for the selection and cultivation of the best roses for exhibition or mere pleasure by that large section of the gardening world, the amateur lovers of roses

In commencing this little work on the Rose, it may be advisable to say why it is undertaken in the face of the existence of so many excellent books on the subject, from Canon Hole's amusing and instructive book, and the very practical and monumental ones by Mr William Paul and Foster Melliar, down to the sixpenny treatises on the same subject.

The object aimed at is to write in a manner that may be useful to the thousands of persons, every year increasing in numbers, who love to grow the Rose for its own sake without any after-thought as to exhibition. Most of the books seem to have this latter as their main object; the desire here will be to make it a secondary one (for no treatise on the Rose can be complete without it), and to consider especially owners of small gardens, who are oftentimes the most zealous and successful cultivators of any flower that they take in hand but are too often left out in the cold by writers who seem never to imagine that there is such a thing as limitation of space or means.

When alluding to the history of the Rose, there is not the slightest idea of taking readers back to ancient days, to give quotations from books that we have never read, or to affect a B 2 Hoses for Amateurs. folk-lore knowledge we do not possess.

Anyone desirous of pursuing these subjects may have his wishes fully gratified so far as the former is concerned about reading " Ros Rosarum," by F. V. B., and as regards the latter, " Plant-Lore," by Folkard, in both of which they are exhaustively treated. What we have to do with more particularly here is the history of the Rose in our own days and the causes which have contributed to its cultivation in these islands to an extent which has never been known before.

When we recollect the position the Rose used to occupy in gardens, we are confronted with the remembrance of a large number of summer Roses in our gardens that were a blaze of beauty in June when Provence, Gallica, Moss, and other Roses of a similar character were those cultivated; when the Tea and Noisette were comparatively unknown; and when, if any Roses were to be had, later on, the China or old Monthly Rose was the source of supply. Later on, the Hybrid Perpetuals and Teas came to be known, and Standards were greatly in favour, and every year the Rose-man appeared with his bundle of sticks, to obtain which he had no doubt committed a considerable amount of trespass.

Roses for amateurs - PDF book by Henry Honywood Dombrain