21 JUNE 1935, Page 16

Go, Lovely Rose We have had no confession or acknowledgement

of the wholesale severity of the May frosts quite so official as a notice from the National Rose Society that it has been forced to abandon the June show. This, as French fencers say, is to cry touche indeed. June is the month of roses, but there are none, at least in many gardens, and even the wild field and dog roses have been decimated. Happily our roses no longer, as in the days of Horace, deserve to be called breves : they are the most persistent blossomers in the garden, and one class has earned its title of " perpetual " at any rate as well as some " perennials." Both have exaggerations, but at least more excuse than certain tricks of adornment known as permanent. We may safely prophesy that roses will be in gorgeous bloom when the National Rose Society's postponed show takes place three months later. The roses that are most quickly and fully recovering—in my garden at least—are the invaluable Poulsens. The rose is perpetual in other respects. I know one bush of over 50 years of age ; and a photograph is published in Gardening Illustrated of a plant of that most useful white climber Madame Alfred Carriere, which is 33 years old, but still flowers freely from June to October.