ROSE-GROWN ENGLAND.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1516, 12 August 1912, Page 3

ROSE-GROWN ENGLAND.

Nature in England has for once come to a climax ct the date of the longest day (says a correspondent in an English paper). If anyone wishes to see. England at its test one has only to walk down a characteristic hedgerow, and the gardens out-top- tho hedgerows. We have not sren such roses for a generation. Both the pink and tho white wild briars are to-day so loaded with bloom that they gleam distinct, as if they were so many Chinese lanterns during the darkest night. Even the "constellations of moons," represented by tao discs ol dogwood, in spite of their lamp-liko na; ture, are less brilliant than the briars. Garden roses have coiuo into full flame simultaneously. That most gorgeous ol all simple roses, Paul's Carmine Pillar, -is almost too bright to bo looked at; and as it wanes the other climbing roses—the Jersey Beauty, supreme in foliage; Alberic Barbier, the Longworth Rambler—have come into a profusion of bloom which makes Alidsummer Day midsummer indeed and "flaming June" a veritable fire.

Fields Scarlet with Poppies. ' It is a poppy year as well as a rose year. 'Farmers have, been astounded at the growth of the flower. Fields of sainfoin cut ten days ago now look as if r. Turkey carpet had been laid down. Wheal is so thick with poppies in some Hertfordshire fields that it is being ploughed in as manure; and the brown earth is scarlet with the shed petals. Thcso poppies are not only profuse but also of a strange variety, worth the attention of botanists. Some are double; some vary in shade, as if the Shirley poppies from the gardens had gone astray. Any gardener who has sown a few penny packets of Shirley and Iceland poppies and of sweet peas—which are several weeks early—may this year boast a 'garden as brilliant as the most elaborate.

The sweet peas, like the poppies, arcrunning into curious variations. Several cases of "faseiation" have produced stems bsariug as many os seven blooms; and growers expect a great year with doublepetallcd sweet peas. The high germination of last year's seeds is thought to Ix the reason of the great poppy harvest and of; the excellence of tho sweet peas. A scientist who has been experimenting with seed expects even the wheat seed of last year to keep its germinating power for eight or nine years, so perfect was the ripening and so low the percentage oi moisture in the grain.