Rose planting - preparation of the rose bed

Chapter 17 (extract 2) of "Roses for English Gardens" by Jekyll and Mawley (1902), in which Mr Mawley lays out the requirements to be met before the planting of roses. Thorough site preparation will greatly improve the performance of the roses.

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Illustration: Standard Rose Jules Margottin (Hybrid Perpetual)

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The Preparation of a Rose Bed.—When the preparation of the bed is completed it should contain suitable and well-enriched soil to the depth of at least two feet. Roses prefer a somewhat stiff soil, and yet not one so retentive as to prevent any superfluous moisture from passing readily away from the neighbourhood of their roots. In a soil which is too light the plants are unable to avail themselves as they should of the nourishment brought down to their roots by rain or artificial watering. Such soils moreover become unduly heated in hot and dry weather — whereas, above everything, Roses delight in a consistently cool root-run. Soils which quickly feel the changes of temperature above ground from cold to heat and heat to cold cannot be regarded as suitable for Roses.

In the case of a moderately good Rose soil the beds should be thus prepared. The earth from one end of the bed should be removed to the depth of a foot, and three feet wide, and wheeled to some spot close to the other end of it. Having taken out this trench, the bed should then be bastard-trenched throughout to the depth of two feet; that is to say, it should be dug over, but none of the lower soil brought to the surface. When performing this operation a liberal quantity of manure — farmyard manure for preference — should be incorporated with the soil, filling" in the last trench with the earth which had been previously wheeled there. This will make a Rose bed sufficiently good for all ordinary purposes. Should, however, the bed be required for Roses intended to produce exhibition blooms, it will be well to loosen the soil with a fork at the bottom of each trench, and on this loosened soil to place, grass downwards, the top spit of an old pasture. Then in addition to the farmyard manure some half-inch bones should be mixed evenly with the soil as the trenching proceeds, together with some turfy loam, for there is nothing which will so greatly improve almost any soil for Roses as a liberal supply of fibrous loam. If possible the beds should be completed in August or September, so that the soil in them may have some chance of settling down before the Rose plants are ready for removal to their new quarters in November.

Staking out the Beds.—As soon as the preparation of the bed is completed it will be well to make a rough plan of it on paper and indicate upon it the position that each Rose is intended to occupy. This can readily be done by arranging that the dwarf plants be two feet and the standards three feet apart. These distances will answer admirably for plants intended for the production of exhibition blooms; but for Roses for ordinary garden or home decoration the distances between the plants might with advantage be increased to two feet six inches for dwarfs and to three feet six inches for standards. In the case of varieties described in the catalogues as "very vigorous," and which are intended to be grown as bushes, the plants must be five or even six feet apart.

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Rose planting - site requirements; heeling in; the actual planting