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The modern rose is the flower of the people and the plant for any garden, public or private, large or small. Let no one tell you it is anything but the easiest and most productive of all garden plants. It thrives in any average garden soil; it rewards you for food and watering, it lives for many years, it requires no special conditions, and only very elementary gardening knowledge. For variety of possible uses no plant approaches it. Soil, drainage, planting, pruning, manuring, and general care are all of some consequence, but the rose is so tolerant and adaptable that it would take serious neglect to interfere greatly with the wonderful performance we have grown to expect.

Particularly does this apply to the Floribundas. Ideal in all climates, they meet a need for a hardier, more rugged, easy-to-grow race of roses that give an abundant mass of blooms and colour for garden and home from early spring to early winter. Their alluring range of colours, sizes, and forms is being increasingly appreciated.

One's first thoughts of roses inevitably go to the vast array of wonderful modern Hybrid Teas that so far have provided most of our blooms and our best individual specimens. They comprise what all the world regards as Nature's supreme floral creation, but we have now reached the stage where we can have roses especially suited for any purpose, whether it be for florist's work, home decoration, or garden display. For supreme beauty with utility in low borders, specimen shrubs, impenetrable hedges, pot plants, bedding displays, or covers for pergolas, arches, stumps, pillars, fences, or any unsightly objects, the rose, in some form, will answer all requirements. If so desired, one may choose evergreens instead of the usual deciduous types.

To achieve these many purposes roses are grown in a variety of ways-as dwarfs, or bushes, for general garden planting, specimen plants, shrubs, or hedges, as climbers, as pillar or tripod roses, and as standards or trees. Bush roses send up their main branches from about ground level. True climbers produce long canes with no terminal flower-bud; some are much more vigorous than others. The less rampant climbers lend themselves admirably for training up pillars or tripods, and so are grouped as "pillar roses". Standard roses are classed as "quarter", "half", "three-quarter", or "full standard" according to the length of the stock on to which they have been budded. The stock of a quarter standard is fifteen to eighteen inches high; that of a half standard is about two feet high; that of a three-quarter standard, the type most commonly grown, is about thirty inches high, and the seldom-seen full standard is about three feet high.

Paintings of the Middle Ages show the rose used for hedge-making. Although those early varieties (all species, of course) bloomed only in the spring, it was a bountiful crop of blossom on a fairly compact hedge, and no such beauty at any stage of the year is produced by any other hedge. In Australia, early settlers planted many hedges of the Sweet Briar (R. rubiginosa), but very few of them have been cared for, in any way, for many years. Of the early roses, only one other seems to have been used to any extent in Australia-a double red variety of R. chinensis. It makes an excellent over-blooming hedge, which can be kept neatly trimmed to any height from three to six feet.

Lorraine Lee, distributed in 1924, is in such demand today that our nurserymen never have sufficient plants. Evergreen and ever-blooming, it is a perfect hedge-rose. For many years Lorraine Lee and Sunny South (taller, more deciduous, but with a flower that many people prefer to Lorraine Lee) were almost our only hedge roses, other than the species, but now many others, especially Floribundas, are being grown in greater numbers. Chapter IV contains a list of hedge roses. By selecting suitable varieties one can have rose hedges, or borders, of any height from eighteen inches to ten feet.

In a general garden almost any of the varieties suitable for hedge-making are superb as specimen shrubs, or spaced in borders amongst annuals and perennials for spots of colour from early October to June. Some, particularly the Floribundas, give their best effect when planted in groups of three, five, or more.