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.
Provence.
CABBAGE.
The Provence or [Cabbage Rose], R. centifolia,