Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set ForthEarle, Alice Morse
History
Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth
Earle, Alice Morse
Gardens; Landscape gardening
The variety of Roses known to old American gardens, as to English
gardens, was few. The English Eglantine was quickly established here in
gardens and spread to roadsides. The small, ragged, cheerful little
Cinnamon Rose, now chiefly seen as a garden stray, is undoubtedly old.
This Rose diffuses its faint "sinamon smelle" when the petals are dried.
Nearly all of the Roses vaguely thought to be one or two hundred years
old date only, within our ken, to the earlier years of the nineteenth
century. The Seven Sisters Rose, imagined by the owner of many a
Southern garden to belong to colonial days, is one of the family _Rosa
multiflora_, introduced from Japan to England by Thunberg. Its catalogue
name is Greville. I think the Seven Sisters dates back to 1822. The
clusters of little double blooms of the Seven Sisters are not among our
beautiful Roses, but are planted by the house mistress of every Southern
home from power of association, because they were loved by her
grandmothers, if not by more distant forbears. The crimson Boursaults
are no older. They came from the Swiss Alps and therefore are hardy, but
they are fussy things, needing much pruning and pulling out. I recall
that they had much longer prickles than the other roses in our garden.
The beloved little Banksia Rose came from China in 1807. The Madame
Plantier is a hybrid China Rose of much popularity. We have had it about
seventy or eighty years. In the lovely garden of Mrs. Mabel Osgood
Wright, author of _Flowers and Trees in their Haunts_, I saw, this
spring, a giant Madame Plantier which had over five thousand buds, and
which could scarcely be equalled in beauty by any modern Roses. Its
photograph gives scant idea of its size.
What gratitude we have in spring to the Sweetbrier! How early in the
year, from sprouting branch and curling leaf, it begins to give forth
its pure odor! Gracious and lavish plant, beloved in scent by every one,
you have no rival in the spring garden with its pale perfumes. The
Sweetbrier and Shakespeare's Musk Rose (_Rosa moschata_) are said to be
the only Roses that at evening pour forth their perfume; the others are
what Bacon called "fast of their odor."
The June Rose, called by many the Hedgehog Rose, was, I think, the first
Rose of summer. A sturdy plant, about three feet in height; set thick
with briers, it well deserved its folk name. The flowers opened into a
saucer of richest carmine, as fragrant as an American Beauty, and the
little circles of crimson resembling the _Rosa rugosa_ were seen in
every front dooryard.
[Illustration: Cinnamon Roses.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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