into
roses from a collector's standpoint, she can have representatives of the
best groups and a continuous supply of buds of some sort both outdoors
and for the house from the first week in June until winter.

To begin with, roses need plenty of air. This does not mean that they
flourish in a draught made by the rushing of north or east wind between
buildings or down a cut or roadway. If roses are set in a mixed border,
the tendency is inevitably to crowd or flank them by some succulent
annual that overgrows the limit we mentally set for it, thereby stopping
the circulation of air about the rose roots, and lo! the harm is done!

If you want good roses, you must be content to see a little bare, brown
earth between the bushes, only allowing a narrow outside border of
pansies, the horned bedding violets (_cornuta_), or some equally compact
and clean-growing flower. To plant anything thickly between the roses
themselves prevents stirring the soil and the necessary seasonal
mulchings, for if the ground-covering plants flourish you will dislike
to disturb them.

The first thing to secure for your rosary is sun--sun for all the
morning. If the shadow of house, barn, or of distant trees breaks the
direct afternoon rays in July and August, so much the better, but no
overhead shade at any time or season. This does not prevent your
protecting a particularly fine quantity of buds, needed for some special
occasion, with a tentlike umbrella, such as one sees fastened to the
seat in pedlers' wagons. A pair of these same umbrellas are almost a
horticultural necessity for the gardener's comfort as well, when she
sits on her rubber mat to transplant and weed.

Given your location, consideration of soil comes next, for this can be
controlled in a way in which the sun may not be, though if the ground
chosen is in the bottom of a hollow or in a place where surface water is
likely to settle in winter, you had better shift the location without
more ado. It was a remark pertinent to all such places that Dean Hole
made to the titled lady who showed him an elaborately planned rose
garden, in a hollow, and waited for his praise. She heard only the
remark that it was an admirable spot for _ferns_!

If your soil is clayey, and holds water for this reason, it can be
drained by porous tiles, sunk at intervals in the same way as meadow or
hay land would be drained, that is if the size of your garden and the
lay of the land warrants it. If, howev