Among the several hundred things I have fully planned out to do, to solace my old age after I have become a "centurion," is a series of water-color drawings of all these old-time Roses, for so many of them are already scarce.
The Michigan Rose which covered the arches in Mr. Seward's garden, has clusters of deep pink, single, odorless flowers, that fade out nearly white after they open. It is our only native Rose that has passed into cultivation. From it come many fine double-flowered Roses, among them the beautiful Baltimore Belle and Queen of the Prairies, which were named about 1836 by a Baltimore florist called Feast. All its vigorous and hardy descendants are scentless save the Gem of the Prairies. It is one of the ironies of plant-nomenclature when we have so few plant names saved to us from the picturesque and often musical speech of the American Indians, that the lovely Cherokee Rose, Indian of name, is a Chinese Rose. It ought to be a native, for everywhere throughout our Southern states its pure white flowers and glossy evergreen leaves love to grow till they form dense thickets.
People who own fine gardens are nowadays unwilling to plant the old "Summer Roses" which bloom cheerfully in their own Rose-month and then have no more blossoming till the next year; they want a Remontant Rose, which will bloom a second time in the autumn, or a Perpetual Rose, which will give flowers from June till cut off by the frost. But these latter-named Roses are not only of fine gardens but of fine gardeners; and folk who wish the old simple flower garden which needs no highly-skilled care, still are happy in the old Summer Roses I have named.
Cottage Garden with Roses.
A Rose hedge is the most beautiful of all garden walls and the most ancient. Professor Koch says that long before men customarily surrounded their gardens with walls, that they had Rose hedges. He tells us that each of the four great peoples of Asia owned its own beloved Rose, carried in all wanderings, until at last the four became common to all races of men. Indo-Germanic stock chose the hundred-leaved red Rose, Rosa gallica (the best Rose for conserves). Rosa damascena, which blooms twice a year, and the Musk Rose were cherished by the Semitic people; these were preferred for attar of Roses and Rose water. The yellow Rose, Rosa lutea, or Persian Rose, was the flower of the Turkish Mongolian people. Eastern Asia is the fatherland of the Indian and Tea Roses. The Rose has now become as universal as sunlight. Even in Iceland and Lapland grows the lovely Rosa nitida.
We say these Roses are common to all peoples, but we have never in America been able to grow yellow Roses in ample bloom in our gardens. Many that thrive in English gardens are unknown here. The only yellow garden Rose common in old gardens was known simply as the "old yellow Rose," or Scotch Rose, but it came from the far East. In a few localities the yellow Eglantine was seen.
The picturesque old custom of paying a Rose for rent was known here. In Manheim, Pennsylvania, stands the Zion Lutheran Church, which was gathered together by Baron William Stiegel, who was the first glass and iron manufacturer of note in this country. He came to America in 1750, with a fortune which would be equal to-day to a million dollars, and founded and built and named Manheim. He was a man of deep spiritual and religious belief, and of profound sentiment, and when in 1771 he gave the land to the church, this clause was in the indenture:—
"Yielding and paying therefor unto the said Henry William Stiegel, his heirs or assigns, at the said town of Manheim, in the Month of June Yearly, forever hereafter, the rent of One Red Rose, if the same shall be lawfully demanded."