Roses for converting ugliness to beauty

Chapter 13 (extract) of "Roses for English Gardens" by Jekyll and Mawley (1902), in which Miss Jekyll outlines the use of roses for covering and disguising eyesores.

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Illustration: Climbing rose over an old farm shed

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CHAPTER XIII

ROSES FOR CONVERTING UGLINESS TO BEAUTY

No plant is more helpful and accommodating than the Rose in the way of screening ugliness and providing living curtains of flowery drapery for putting over dull or unsightly places. For instance, no object can be much less of an adornment to a garden than the class of ready-made wooden arbour or summerhouse "made of well-seasoned deal, and painted three coats complete." Yet by covering it with an outer skin of ramping Roses it may in about three years be made a beautiful thing, instead of an eyesore. The illustration shows such a house that has been planted with Crimson Rambler and other free-growing Roses. Larch poles, connected by top rails, have been placed round it. The spreading branches of the Roses will reach out over the rails, and the whole thing will become a house of Roses. Not only will it be beautiful, but the deep masses of leafy and flowery branches will keep off the sun-heat, which, without such a shield, makes these small wooden buildings insufferably hot in summer.

Many an old farmhouse is now being converted into a dwelling-house for another class of resident, and wise are they who consider well before they pull down the old farm buildings. For even a tarred shed, with a thatched or tiled roof, may soon be made beautiful by a planting of these beneficent Rambling Roses. Many of the buildings, shed or barn, cowhouse or stable, may still have the weatherboarding undefiled by gas-tar, and if so, its silvery grey colour is a ground whose becoming quality can hardly be beaten for tender pink and rosy Roses. Dead or unprofitable old orchard trees, too, may have their smaller branches sawn off and be planted with Roses. If they are shaky, some stout oaken props, also rose-clothed, will steady them for many a year. When once these Roses get hold and grow vigorously the amount of their yearly growth is surprising.

Generally among these farm buildings there is, in the enclosed yard, a simple shelter for animals, made of posts supporting a lean-to roof, either against a barn or a high wall. This, without alteration, or merely by knocking through the two ends, may be made into a delightful shaded cloister, each post having its Rose. There would not need to be a climbing Rose to every post, but a climbing and a pillar Rose alternately. The lean-to roof would need some slight trellising, the rougher the better. No material for this is so good as oak, not sawn but split. Split wood lasts much longer than sawn, as it rends in its natural lines of cleavage and leaves fairly smooth edges. Sawing cuts cruelly across and across the fibres, leaving a fringe or ragged pile of torn and jagged fibre which catches and holds the wet and invites surface decay.

These farm places have also commonly old field hedges, some one of which may become the boundary of the new pleasure garden. If it is rightly placed for shelter or for its original purpose of a field fence, or for its newer service, it is better not to grub it up, but to fill its gaps and weak places with freegrowing Roses. If it has Thorns, either Blackthorn or Whitethorn, and Hollies, both of some height, it is a chance to be thankful for of showing how these grand rambling Roses will rush up and tumble out, and make lovely dainty wreaths and heavy-swagging garlands of their own wild will. We have only to place them well and show them how to go, to lead and persuade them just at the beginning. In two years' time they will understand what is wanted, and will gladly do it of themselves in many ways of their own—ways much better than any that we could possibly have devised.

Then there is no end to the beautiful ways of making Rose arbours and tunnels, or Rose houses for the children. Dead trees or any rough branching wood can easily be put up and spiked together to make the necessary framework, and the Roses will take to it gladly. An old dead Apple-tree, if it happens to stand where an arbour is wanted, need not even be moved; another bit of trunk can be put up eight feet away, and the branches of the standing one sawn off, all but those that go the right way. These branches can be worked in to form the top, keeping a stout, slightly curved piece for the front top beam. [...].