June is the month of roses, as May is the month of apple blossoms and lilacs. Not a home in America should be without the help of roses to make it homeful. They make for peace and character, and they breed ozone for health. With grapevines I would have roses climb my verandas, and greet me in the wilder nooks and corners; not always grown in conventional beds.

Fifty years ago only the old-fashioned mother’s roses could be generally had, and besides them there were very few choice sorts to be found even in hot-houses. There is now hardly a corner of the United States where some varieties of the more choice ever-bloomers will not thrive. The hybrid perpetuals were the first to adjust themselves to our Northern climate, and they still give us a good list of invaluables. The hybrid teas have, however, displaced the former, because they are not only hardy, but give us continual bloom. They vary in their power to resist zero weather, but nearly all of this class can, with a slight protection, endure any Northern winter. I find myself, however, still not quite satisfied unless I retain some of the old-fashioned sorts, especially for hedges and groups. The old Cabbage rose was a beauty, any way, and the Damask roses, two or three varieties of them, are really elegant in flower, if only their blooming period were longer.

Among the hybrid perpetuals Clio, and Dinsmore, and Margaret Dickson, and Ulrich Brunner, and Prince Camille de Rohan, and Giant of Battles, and Jules Margottin and Paul Neyron, with Baroness Rothschild, and Anna de Diesbach, and General Jacqueminot, make a superb list, giving bloom twice in a year, and occasionally in midsummer. If one wishes to add to this list take Alfred Colomb, a rich crimson; Gloire Lyonnaise, Magna Charta, Vick’s Caprice, Victor Verdier. Among these you will find almost every shade of scarlet, crimson, pink, white and carmine. Clio is to my taste one of the finest roses in existence, of a gorgeous flesh color, shaded pink, and a very free bloomer. Giant of Battles and Prince Camille give us two shades of crimson; Margaret Dickson is a glorious white rose; Dinsmore as rich a scarlet as you could find anywhere, while Fisher Holmes is a very dark scarlet and a very free bloomer. Two other remarkably good bloomers are Mrs. Charles Wood and Madame Masson. Still, in the whole list there is nothing better for massing or grouping than Ulrich Brunner.

The hybrid teas are multiplying with great rapidity. New and glorious sorts come out every season, and one has to test for himself somewhat their capacity for bedding out in different soils. The most popular of all is American Beauty, a rosy crimson rose, and close after this Etoile de France has secured a very prominent place, as perhaps the best crimson rose for bedding that we have. J. B. Clark jumped into favor two years ago as an enormous deep crimson and very full-blooming sort. It is not so much a favorite with me as I expected. I like better, for crimson, Cardinal—which is certainly a noble rose in open ground. Betty is a superb pink, and Wellesley is another. Bessy Brown is a pure white, flushed with pink, and one of the finest roses in existence. Meteor is a splendid velvety crimson and has only one fault, that the petals drop too quick. Mad. Caroline Testout is a satiny rose that endures the sun nobly, and Helena Bambier is another first class bedding rose, of a salmon rose, shaded yellow. Dean Hole, a splendid carmine, and Virginia Coxe, a fiery crimson, cannot be beaten for bedding, unless it be by the new rose Killarney, a rich pink. Souv. du President Carnot is one of my special favorites, both in bud and blossom, of a fine, rich blush. Richmond is unsurpassed for its magnificent flowers, if you can find it just the right spot. It is inclined to prefer indoors for doing its best. Now I have left three or four more which are among my own special delights. One of these is General McArthur, bright and deep rose color; with Mad. Jules Grolez, a cherry red that is unsurpassed, and Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, a white that has no superior.

Living in the South half of the year, I have the privilege of growing tea roses with little consideration of their hardiness. In my Northern garden I prefer hybrid teas and hybrid perpetuals, but in Florida we luxuriate in the pure teas and Noisettes. Marechal Niel often stands in our beds with forty or fifty great and noble balls of gold weighing down its branches. Then we have climbing around our porches James Sprunt, Chromatella, and Gainsborough, all of which unfold their blossoms freely in January and February. Other climbers, more or less hardy, but all magnificent, are Climbing Meteor, Climbing Clotilde Soupert, Climbing Wootton, Climbing Helen Gould, and Mrs. Robert Peary. Almost as good are the hardy climbing roses, Thousand Beauties, Crimson Rambler, Philadelphia, Keystone (which is a thoroly hardy yellow), Rubin and Tennessee Belle. The Climbing Polyanthas are also nearly as hardy. Climbing Meteor is a sport from the old Meteor, and with some protection is hardy. Mrs. Robert Peary and Climbing Helen Gould need but little protection. James Sprunt is moderately hardy and a wonderfully fine cherry red. Climbing Bridesmaid is better adapted to the Southern climate.

Fifty years ago we began to hear about the Bourbons and the Chinas, two classes of roses that gave us our very best potting sorts, while a few of them made grand bedders, killing back somewhat with freezing, but sending up great blossoming shoots very quickly. I can remember well when the florists of a past generation bent admiringly over Malmaison—still one of our really fine roses, flesh color touched with rose. No garden is even complete without Hermosa; not only a beauty in itself, but the parent of many other fine sorts by crossing. Hermosa is always in blossom, always giving perfect roses, in big clusters, on every new shoot. Queen’s Scarlet is probably the best scarlet in this class, rich and velvety, unless Archduc Charles is better. Lucullus is one of the richest dark crimson, and Agrippina is a fiery red. Louis Philippe noteThis could be either Louis-Philippe #1 or Louis-Philippe #2 was a favorite with our mothers, because it was a good house rose as well as bedding.

Among miscellaneous roses, besides the old Cabbage and Cinnamon and Damask, the Wychurianas are really very useful. The color of the foliage is intensely rich green, and if you wish to cover a rockery or barren piece of soil, here you have something to do it. Some of them are only annual bloomers, but others are perpetuals, and they multiply themselves with great rapidity by suckerage. The Sweet Briar class of roses is enlarging rapidly, as are also the Rugosa roses. In the South we have the Cherokee roses running all over houses and huts, and covering outhouses completely, with a profusion of either single or double roses. I do not like it any better, however, than the old "Michigan" rose, as we called it in the North. I really never saw anything more comforting than the wild roses of Maine, bordering the highways and filing up every moist spot with tenderness.

Among the newer roses be sure and select some of the hybrid Rugosas, especially Conrad Meyer—perfectly hardy and very fragrant; color, silvery rose. Then we have Mad. Georges Bruant, semi-double and coming in great clusters, with delicious fragrance and a brilliant white in color. New Century is in this class, giving large, bright, rosy pink flowers, bordered with white. Some of the very newest tea roses for Southern planting are Mad. Grenville, a superb yellow, climbing with long, finely formed buds and flowers. With this select Empress Alexandra, of a bronzy salmon; and Lady Dorothea, a large rose, giving different shades of peach and flesh. Among the new Bourbon roses are a striped Malmaison; and among the new Wychuriana roses we have doubles, running from white to pink, and pink Pearl gives us a crimson bud. The Golden Sun is a new rose, and wonderful apart from the fact that it is the first of a new race. The color is a blending of gold and red and pink, and the flowers are large and globular, giving incurved centers.

I am not giving you anything like a sketch of rose development up to date. The catalogs will give you several hundred varieties, out of which you can very wisely select one hundred good growers and good bloomers. However, in any collection you must not omit the Souperts. There are the red, and the pink, and the yellow, and the white.noteSoupert & Notting bred many white polyanthas though only one had Soupert in the name: Clotilde Soupert. No rose was known as White Soupert. Taken by itself, the red Soupert is known as Petite Andree, and it is a wonderful rose. It produces large, full flowers continually, and with astonishing profusion. The color is a brilliant crimson; and pink Soupert differs from it only in the color. Yellow Soupert is otherwise known as Mosella, and here again the flowers are produced in immense clusters and great profusion. White Soupert is like the preceding, only of an ivory white. The Cochet roses constitute another group of five, and some of them with private names apart from the class. Red Cochet is known as Helen Gould, and I do not know many roses that rival it. It is always in bloom, on long, strong shoots, and its color is rosy crimson. Yellow Cochet is a hardy everblooming yellow rose, in which respect it has very few rivals, if any. Crimson Cochet is Etoile de France under another name, noteI have found no reference that considers Étoile de France to be a synonym of Crimson Cochet. One reference lists Crimson Cochet as the synonym for Balduin. and is one of the most magnificent roses in existence, crimson velvet and deliciously fragrant. The Dingee-Conard Company sent out last year as the finest of all roses the Charles Dingee. What I have seen of it so far in my Southern garden makes me think that is is not overpraised. Its originators speak of it as surpassing in beauty every other known rose. Its flowers are of a rose shade, running into a creamy white, and they are produced in great profusion on strong, stiff stems.

The Lyon rose is a hybrid tea, and is spoken of generally as one of the most important introductions of modern times. It is a constant bloomer, with large double flowers, exceedingly fragrant, and of a pink shade, edged with red and shaded with yellow—a rose hard to describe. Magnafrano is one of the really great roses, always in bloom, exceedingly sweet, and of a deep, shining rose. The La France roses include five splendid sorts, for general planting, and almost hardy. Pink La France is very generally known now and loved by everybody. It was the parent of the hybrid teas class. I am almost inclined to select my twenty favorites, but am afraid that it would run into a list of at least fifty. Perhaps I have indicated my partiality sufficiently already. For winter roses there are few if any better than the old Chinas and Bourbons. Take Hermosa and Agrippina and Louis Philippe. noteThis rose could be either Louis-Philippe #1 or Louis-Philippe #2 Of course, the hybrid perpetuals are of no use for potting, Make your selection as a rule from the teas.

The future rose can hardly surpass what we now have. It seems to be a line of evolution that has reached its end. The newer sorts may improve somewhat in texture and persistence, and the plants may become somewhat larger and stronger. What we are to look out for is not larger roses or sweeter ones, but stocky growing ever-bloomers. Bear in mind that we have in the rose plant a cousin of the apple, and the pear, and the plum, and the cherry. All these went off to fruit bearing, while the rose bush evolved sweeter and larger flowers. Will it ever go to fruit bearing? This is not entirely impossible, altho improbable—at least for a long time to come. Who knows but some day we may have a new fruit in this family, by a sudden divergence, or by a gradual evolution. It is not absolutely impossible that the seeds of the rose may after awhile do what the seeds of the blackberry are doing, or that we may even have a bunch of cherry-like and edible fruits in the place of the hairy but beautiful seed pods.

If I were young once more I would, with all my cross-breeding and seedling growing, add a good deal more work in the rose garden. I have made one of the finest apples that now can be grown in our orchards; the best currant for our gardens; a good lot of extra fine grapes; but I have no seedling rose that is worth the while. I wish that my younger readers would try growing rose seedlings. Give posterity not only what you earn by your labor, but what you make by your wits. It will be fine to leave our names to blossom in the gardens of future generations—to live forever in a rose bed. Let them ask who you were, not from a deed of bravery, but from a thing of beauty and sweetness. I doubt if the generals, whose names some of our roses bear, have left any better testimonial of their manhood.

When you get a package of roses, do not crowd the lump of dirt down into a pot, and surely not into the middle of a pot of earth in which some other plant has previously grown; but, whether you plant it in a garden or the greenhouse, shake gently off the loose dirt, leaving that which clings to the finer roots. Do it very gently, and if the soil be sticky it will be even better to wash the roots in tepid water; then plant rather deeper than the plant formerly stood, in either bed or pot, spreading the roots carefully. Now do not put any manure or strong fertilizer on these roots. The soil must be good garden soil, only slightly enriched from the edge of a barnyard, or such soil as florists keep prepared. Mark what I say, so not overfeed anything that you plant, nor feed it richly until it begins to grow. This is true of trees as well as roses. But when the rose bush is well under way you can hardly overdo the enriching. Roses are great eaters, especially the climbers, and they all like water.

Cut back your teas and chinas, that blossom on new shoots, as soon as the shoots are thru blooming; but head in your hybrid perpetuals and others very carefully, removing only the weaker shoots and superfluous suckers. If you want roses to climb well over a sunny exposure you had better shield them somewhat until they get good size and able to shield themselves. In the country, where you have plenty of land, and specially where there are glens and steep banks, try covering the slopes with the sturdy growing, old-fashioned Damask and the new-fashioned Wychuriana. You can see a bank of these roses as far as you can see anything, not only for the beauty of the blossoms, but the brilliant green of the foliage. These sorts run their roots underground and take good care of themselves. On the whole they will give you more satisfaction than formal beds filled with sorts that you must work over.

One really well-grown rose bush near your door will give you more pleasure than a dozen that you have to make special trips to examine. In my Southern home a Marechal Niel with fifty buds and flowers, and standing six or eight feet high, will pretty nearly satisfy any rose lover. In the North I do not know that I have had any more satisfaction than from a big Marshall P. Wilder. The General Jack will also pay for having a lot of room and a lot of feed, while the little Hermosa is the cosiest and most floriferous of the smaller-growing plants, if we except Clotilde Soupert—and the Soupert has a bad fault of losing a lot of its buds in wet weather. Another little rose that will stand a lot of multiplication is Agrippina, and I never can quite forget the Sanguinea which, seventy years ago, was the favorite of my little mother. Those who are governed by their noses, as I confess I am largely, will be drawn to those that give a special fragrance. I am for this reason specially fond of Lord Raglan, which emits an odor like honey, while for color no rose more completely satisfies me than Jules Margottin.

However, you will soon get acquainted with a few roses for which you have a special affiliation. Do not try to follow according to my tastes, but learn to feel freely in your garden as you learn to think freely in your library. And this is June. I have written my notes partly in Florida, with a great climbing Gainsborough dropping pink petals all over me while the sun dropped down behind the pines of Lake Lucy; and I have written them partly in my Northern balcony, where a May Duke cherry swings it arms full of just coloring fruit, and a bunch of McArthur and Virginia Cox roses fills a vase at my hand. What would June be without its roses? Plant them freely; love them dearly; and be a better as well as wiser man for their companionship.

Clinton, N. Y.