Roses on houses

Chapter 12 (extract 1) of "Roses for English Gardens" by Jekyll and Mawley (1902), in which Miss Jekyll discusses the use of roses on houses. Ugly houses, a common type, are ideal for roses.

---

Illustration: Cluster roses on a cottage

---

CHAPTER XII

ROSES ON WALLS AND HOUSES

The name Cluster Rose, which formerly belonged almost entirely to the older class of garden Roses known as the Ayrshires, varieties of sempervirens, and the Musk Roses, has lately been necessarily extended to all the beautiful things that the last few years have given us, most of them hybrids of Rosa multiflora or polyantha. All these Roses are derived from species of rambling habit that in their native places climb about among rocks and bushes. They seem willing to extend their natural growth, for if guided into an evergreen tree, such as Holly or Ilex, they will clamber up to surprising heights. Climbing Aimee Vibert, for instance, which is generally used as a pillar Rose or for some such use as that shown in the frontispiece, will rush high up into a tree, as may be seen in the picture [roses in trees]. The uses of these free Roses are unending, but just now it is their adaptation to house and garden walls that is under consideration. When growing naturally, these Roses throw out young rods of new growth every year; by degrees the older growths die, and the younger ones, pushing outward, shoot up through the dead and dying branches, both hiding them and displaying their own fresh young beauty.

But on a wall this internal scaffolding of dead wood cannot be tolerated, and a close watch has to be kept on the plants, and the older growths have to be cut right away at least every two years. How these free Roses will grow over and decorate the porch and walls of a small house of no architectural pretension may be seen from the illustration. It is just these houses that best lend themselves to the use of the climbing Roses, indeed many that are absolutely ugly, or worse than plainly ugly — debased by fictitious so-called ornament of the worst class — may be redeemed and even made beautiful by these bountiful and lovely Cluster Roses.

A modest dwelling that has no special beauty or character may by a clever use of climbing Roses be converted into a delightful object. No one could pass the roadside cottage shown in the illustration without a thrill of admiration for the free-growing cluster Rose that covers the walls and wreaths the front of the porch.

The little house itself has lost much of its true character from the evident alteration of the windows, which would originally have been either lead lights and casements, or, if sash windows, would have had the panes smaller, with rather thick sash-bars. The large panes destroy the proportion and make the house look too small for them. Some ugly flat frames to all the windows, and pediment-shaped additions to the tops of the lower ones, do much to destroy and vulgarise the effect of what must have been a little building with the modest charm of perfect simplicity. The lead-roofed porch is right, and so is the open wooden railing. One cannot but be thankful that when the windows were altered so much for the worse, the railing was not replaced by a cast-iron "ornamental" atrocity.

When a house is of fine design one hesitates about covering it with flowering plants, but in such cases they find their right places on terrace walls, unless these are decorated with wrought stone balustrading. The illustration [not shown] shows an example of good use of the beautiful Garland Rose on the terrace of a good square-built house of middle or late eighteenth century construction. The terrace is not balustraded, and the two or three feet of height gained by the rising of the Rose and the other free growths give the needed sense of security in a kind of living parapet.

----

More: Roses for garden walls