There isn’t anything easier in the world to propagate than Climbing Roses. And here is the easiest way to do it:—after the blossoms fade take the flower stems or side shoots all along the main canes, for cuttings, making them about four to six inches long and cutting them just below a bud at the bottom and above at the top.

Roses from cuttings

Set them an inch apart in a box of wet sand, in the sunniest exposure you can find—and keep them wet. And you’ll have a nice lot of rooted cuttings in the course of five or six weeks. I started cuttings three years ago, though I didn’t know just what I was going to do with them at the time. But the Climbing Rose bug bit me severely and I raised them anyhow; and last fall I transplanted forty two-year-old plants that I had allowed to grow along in a tangle until I could decide their fate. They had grown five to eight-foot canes with no attention. And I knew what I wanted of them. Wire fences are specially made for them. A wire fence is no thing of beauty but nearly everybody has one somewhere around the premises. Plant Climbing Roses to tie to the wire. This idea has taken a firm hold through northern Ohio and Indiana and while traveling through these states the latter part of last June it was surprising to see the number of cottages with wire fences about them gay with Ramblers.

Roses from seed

Then, too, there is the fun of growing them from seed, which is an easy matter—and perhaps you may raise a fine new Climbing Rose. Again, you may not! But here is the simplest way to try. In the fall when the hips have turned red, break them open, separate the seeds and plant them about half an inch deep in a row, somewhere handy to mark—and leave them to their fate. In the spring some fine day you will be surprised to see baby Roses. They do not germinate uniformly, so do not disturb the row except to transplant them. I have a fence planted with ten bushes from seed which ought to bloom this year. If they are worthless they can be thrown away. If they prove to be good ones, there they may remain.

Of all the Ramblers—a term which seems to belong more strictly to the Wichuraiana types which will ramble along the ground as happily as up in the air—Hiawatha is the most brilliant I have seen, with its great bunches of little Roses, crimson at the tips with a contrasting white centre. Excelsa is another brilliant one, a deep rose color of the Dorothy Perkins type. Thousand Beauties (I prefer the English equivalent to Tausendschoen) is a larger individual flower in various shades of pink from almost white to a deep pink in the aging blooms. Christine Wright is a fine light pink, large flowered and a rampant grower.

All of them are beautiful in flower and have fine foliage to disguise a chicken yard fence or other unsightly wire barrier if pillars and arches are not available.

Sherman R. Duffy, Chicago .