The famous rose gardens of Lyons owe their excellence largely to a light soil, an abundance of sunshine and the proper amount of moisture. From time immemorial, local rose-growers have taken advantage of these favorable conditions until skill and interest in the industry have made the roses of the Rhone valley known throughout the parks and gardens of the world. The ground where the roses are chiefly cultivated is on the outskirts of the city. It is flat, devoid of shade trees and protected only by high walls at the confines of the property. The rose plants are set out for commercial purposes in straight rows, sometimes 100 feet long, the smaller plants 6 inches apart with about 10 inches between rows, while the larger grafted or budded varieties are inserted 10 to 12 inches apart, with 18 inches between rows. The United States Consul at Lyons says that nearly all the plants are out of doors. The greenhouses for a rose garden of 15 acres do not number more than two, averaging 30 feet in length. It is only in exceptional winters that the plants have to be covered. Sometimes the tops of the older plants are rather loosely bound in straw. In every large commercial rose garden of Lyons hundreds of eglantine rose plants are kept to a single stalk for grafting. These are usually gathered by peasants in the woods, or on uncultivated land, and sold to the rose-growers. Roses grown in the alluvial plain near Lyons thrive often even more luxuriantly when transplanted in a heavier soil; but roses taken from such heavier earth, where they may have been grown exclusively, occasionally retrograde when set out in Lyons. An instance may be cited in the case of the "American Beauty," stated to be originally the "Madame Ferdinand Jamin," a French rose, but developed in America and rechristened there. This rose loses much of its acquired richness and size when set out on the land of Lyons. The common rambler, on the other hand, luxuriates on every trellis and pillar. The standard varieties flourish in the Lyons climate, so that nearly all of the best roses of other countries besides the Lyons varieties are grown by local nurserymen. Those whose sole occupation it is to grow roses on a large scale for profit have been known to bring out many new varieties in a year. The resulting roses, if not like the mother flower, may be diminutive in size and enlarged by grafting, but much of the work is experimental, and most of the new varieties are not found to be sufficiently interesting to perpetuate, so that in the end only a few choice ones of marked individuality are definitely named and presented to the public through the catalogues. Some of the finest roses ever known have been grown within sight of the towers of the ancient city of Lyons. That it often takes a vast amount of patient study to develop a new rose may be gathered from the fact that years may elapse before the final bloom grown from seed is perfected and made ready for the trade through propagation by cuttings or otherwise. When success does come—and it comes often enough to make the effort worth the while of the rose-growers of Lyons—the reward is ample. During the present season an entire stock of 10,000 plants of a new rose of a rare coral tint was sold out as soon as offered.

note*Journal of the Royal Society of Arts