Chapter 11 (extract 1) of "Roses for English Gardens" by Jekyll and Mawley (1902), in which Miss Jekyll talks of growing vigorous roses without support, allowing them to exhibit a natural free-growing form.
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Illustration: Garland Rose in the Garden landscape
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CHAPTER XI
ROSES AS FOUNTAINS AND GROWING FREE
Among the many ways of worthily using the free Ayrshire Roses, one of the best is to leave them to their own way of growth, without any staking or guiding whatever. Due space must be allowed for their full size, which will be a diameter of some ten feet. Of these useful garden Roses none is more beautiful than the Garland, with its masses of pretty blush-white bloom. It is well worth getting up at 4 A.M. on a mid-June morning to see the tender loveliness of the newly opening buds; for, beautiful though they are at noon, they are better still when just awaking after the refreshing influence of the short summer night.
Several others among the old Ayrshires are excellent in this way of growth, though perhaps there are none to beat the Garland and Dundee Rambler. A grassy space where they may be seen all round, or a place where the great bush may be free at least on two sides, are the most suitable, or they may be used as central or symmetrically recurring points in a Rose garden of some size. The young growths that show above the mass when the bloom is waning are the flowering branches of next year; they will arch over and bear the clusters of flowers on short stems thrown out at each joint. The way these young main branches spring up and bend over when mature is exactly the way that best displays the bloom.
Each little flower of the cluster is shown in just the most beautiful way; and it is charming to see, when light winds are about, how the ends of the sprays, slightly stirred by the active air, make pretty curtseying movements arising from the weight of the crowded bloom and the elasticity of the supporting stem. There is a whole range of use of these beautiful Roses, from this free fountain shape without any artificial support, to association with trees and bushes in shrub clumps and wood edges, and from that to clambering into the trees themselves.
The illustration shows this pretty Cluster Rose growing over and among some Pernettyas, beside a broad grassy way that passes from garden into copse. The young growths may be seen rising above it, as yet quite soft and tender, and only half grown. As the year goes on they will harden and mature and arch over, and next year bloom in their turn. When these free Roses rush up into trees, instead of throwing out their new growths from close to the earth, they are formed upon the older wood higher up, and the stem or stems that supports them go on growing till sometimes they attain a considerable thickness.
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