Chapter 15 (extract 1) of "Roses for English Gardens" by Jekyll and Mawley (1902), in which Miss Jekyll talks of flower arranging with roses.
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Illustration: A bowl of late September roses.
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CHAPTER XV ROSES AS CUT FLOWERS
There is scarcely any Rose that we can wish to have in our gardens that is not also delightful in the cut state. A china bowl filled with well-grown Hybrid Perpetuals, grand of colour and sweetly scented, is a room decoration that can hardly be beaten both for beauty and for the pleasure it gives, whether in a sitting-room or on the breakfast table. The only weak point about cut Roses is that their life is short. The day they are cut they are at their best, the next day the}' will do, but the third day they lose colour, scent, and texture. Still it is so delightful to any one who lives a fairly simple life in the country to go out and cut a bunch of Roses, that the need for their often renewal is only an impulse towards the fulfilment of a household duty of that pleasant class that is all delight and no drudgery.
Tea Roses last quite a day longer than Hybrid Perpetuals, but they need more careful arrangement, for many of them have rather weak stalks and hang their heads. Still these may be avoided and only strong-stalked ones used. In most cases they are best by themselves, without the addition of any other flowers. In my own practice the only notable exception I make to this general rule is with the Cabbage and Moss Roses, the Damasks, and other old garden kuids. Whether it is that they are so closely associated with what one considers the true old garden flowers, or for some reason of their own ordaining, I could not say, but about midsummer I have great pleasure in putting together Cabbage, Moss, and Damask Roses with Honeysuckle and white Pinks, and China Roses also with white Pinks. The combination of these few flowers, all of sweetest scent, seems to convey, both by sight and smell, the true sentiment of the old English garden of the best and simplest kind.
Large Roses are top-heavy, and every one who is used to arranging flowers, must at some time or other have been vexed by a bunch of Roses carefully placed in a bowl conspiring together to fling themselves out of it all round at the same moment. It is well worth while to have wire frames made for the bowls that are generally in use. Two discs of wire netting with a top rim and three legs of stouter wire can be made by any whitesmith or ironmonger or by the ingenious amateur at home. The lower tier of netting should be an inch from the bottom of the bowl, to catch the lower end of the stalk. I have often used three garden pots, one mside another in a china bowl, thus making three concentric rings and one centre for stalk space. Stiff greenery, like Box or Holly, kept low in the bowl out of sight, also makes a good foundation.
Roses are best also with their own leaves, the chief exception to this being the beauty of red-tinted summer shoots of Oak, which in July and August are extremely harmonious with the colourings of the Teas and hybrid Chinas. Also in the autumn I like to use with my Roses some sprays of the wild Traveller's Joy (Clematis vitalba).
Some of the free-growing Roses are beautiful cut quite long, even to a length of three to four feet. They are delightful decorations in rooms of fair size, arranged in some large deep jar that will hold plenty of water, not only for their sustenance, but as a weighty counterpoise to the flower - laden branches that will hang abroad rather far from the centre of gravity. Roses like Madame Alfred Carriere, that flower in loose bunches on long stems, and the crimson half - double Reine Olga de Wurtemberg, with its incomparable foliage that can be cut almost any length, show by their natural way of growth how they must be arranged in long branching ways. The Ramblers and Ayrshires, too, are beautiful cut in yard-long branches, but are difficult to arrange. Special ways have to be devised for overcoming their desire to swing round flower-side down. But placed high, on the shoulder of some cabinet about six feet from the ground, with the lovely clusters trending downward, they are charming and beautiful room ornaments.
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