Chapter 10 (extract 1) of "Roses for English Gardens" by Jekyll and Mawley (1902), in which Miss Jekyll describes the various forms of screening that roses can accomplish.
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Illustration: A rose screen
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CHAPTER X
ROSE SCREENS, HEDGES, AND TRELLISES
Many are the opportunities in the planning of gardens for having a screen or hedge all of Roses. Sometimes it may occur as part of the Rose garden design, but more often in some detached portion of the grounds some kind of light screen is actually wanted. There are often rubbishy or at least unbeautiful spaces on some of the frontiers of the kitchen garden, where a Rose screen or hedge will not only hide the unsightliness, but will provide a thing beautiful in itself and that yields a large quantity of bloom for cutting.
Many are the kinds of structure that may be used to support and train the Roses, But with posts of oak or larch, and straight long lengths of sawn larch tips for the top rail, and some wire netting of the coarsest mesh, an effective framework may be easily and cheaply made that in three years will show a perfect covering of blooming Roses. Between this and the elaborately made wooden framings there are many grades and forms of flower wall or trellis that can be arranged according to special use or need.
One pretty way is to have a low trellis with posts for pillar Roses at intervals. This can be carried a little further by having chains from post to post. If this should occur on each side of a path, the posts coming opposite each other can be connected by an arched top. This arrangement can also be very prettily adapted to such a Rose trellis at the back of a flower border, either at the two ends of the border or at intervals in its length. It would be an extremely pretty way of having a double flower border in three divisions, with such an open cross screen twice in the length, as well as at the beginning and end. The first division of the border might well be flowers all blue and white and pale yellow, with bluish foliage; the middle one of warm colourings of rose, red, scarlet, orange, and full yellows, and the third of purple, pale pink and white flowers, with silvery and other cool foliage.
Chains are generally used to form the garlands from post to post, and they are the best, as they hang in a good natural line. A cheaper and not bad substitute is wire rope. Whether chain or rope is used it is an excellent plan, and much better for the Roses, to wind thick tarred twine, or something stronger than twine — tarred cord as thick as the diameter of a large Sweet Pea seed — round and round the chain or wire, keeping the coils rather close, so that the Rose branches do not actually touch the iron but rest upon the coiled cord.
For the post and low trellis the posts are planted with any of the good ramblers or Roses of free growth, while the low trellis may have strong growing H.P.s or any of the Teas and Hybrid Teas usually described in Rose lists as "vigorous." In this case two Roses, or three, according to space, preferably of the same kind, would be planted against each panel of the trellis. Another way would be to plant another Rose of rambling habit against the middle of the trellis and train it down over its next neighbour.
Posts when put into the ground should always have the ends prepared either by gas-tarring or by charring in the fire. This preparation should come up the post quite a foot out of the ground, as damp and rot attack it first at or near the ground line. If a better kind of wooden framework is made, the posts are set on stone or brickwork nine inches to a foot out of the ground, as described in the chapter on the pergola.
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