After spreading out the roots as carefully as possible, I plant firmly and water thoroughly, but do not as yet prune off the long branches.  In ten days, having given meanwhile two waterings of liquid manure, I prune the bushes back sharply.  By this time they will have probably dropped the greater part of their leaves, and having had a short but sufficient nap, are ready to grow, which they proceed to do freely.  I do not encourage bloom in July, but as soon as we have dew-heavy August nights it begins and goes on, increasing in quality until hard frost.  Many of these bushes have wintered comfortably and on being pruned to within three inches of the ground have lasted many years.

As to the varieties so treated, that is a secondary consideration, for under these circumstances you must take what the florist has to offer, which will of course be those most suitable to the winter market.  I have used Perle des Jardins, Catherine Mermet, Bride and Bridesmaid, Safrano, Souvenir d’un Ami, and Bon Silene (the rose for button-hole buds) with equal success, though a very intelligent grower affirms that both Bride and Bridesmaid are unsatisfactory as outdoor roses.

I do not say that the individual flowers from these bushes bear relation to the perfect specimens of greenhouse growth in anything but fragrance, but in this way I have roses all the autumn, “by the fistful,” as Timothy Saunders’s Scotch appreciation of values puts it, though his spouse, Martha Corkle, whose home memories are usually expanded by the perspective of time and absence, in this case speaks truly when she says on receiving a handful, “Yes, Mrs. Evan, they’re nice and sweetish and I thank you kindly, but, ma’am, they couldn’t stand in it with those that grows as free as corn poppies round the four-shillin’-a-week cottages out Gloucester way, and no disrespec’ intended.”

The working season of the rose garden begins the first of April with the cutting out of dead wood and the shortening and shaping of last year’s growth.  With hardy roses the flowers come from fresh twigs on old growth.  I never prune in the autumn, because winter always kills a bit of the top and cutting opens the tubular stem to the weather and induces decay.  Pruning is a science in itself, to be learned by experience.  This is the formula that I once wrote on a slate and kept in my attic desk with my first Boke of the Garden.

April 1. Uncover bushes, prune, and have the winter mulch thoroughly dug in.  Place stakes in the centre of bushes that you know from experience will need them.  Re-tie climbers that have broken away from supports, but not too tightly; let some sprays swing and arch in their own way.

May. As soon as the foliage begins to appear, spray with whale-oil soap lotion mixed hot and let cool:  strength—­a bit the size of a walnut to a gallon of water.  Do this every two weeks until the rosebuds show decided colour, then stop.  This is to keep the rose Aphis at bay, the little soft green fly that is as succulent as the sap upon which it feeds.