This section is from the book "The Gardener's Monthly And Horticulturist V25", by Thomas Meehan. See also: Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long.
From Toulon to Genoa, and in the greatest part of Italy, roses are grafted on Indica-major, a very vigorous rose, but which would be very much exposed to frost at Lyons, Paris, etc.
You generally graft roses on the brier (Rosa canina), but neither the brier nor Indica-major are perpetual bloomers, and both, more particularly the brier, have a time of rest.
Must it not sometimes happen that a perpetual variety, grafted on the brier, tells him : "Well, my dear nurse, if we were to bloom a little;" and that the brier replies: " My darling, you are foolish; it is not the season; I still want rest; be pleased to remain quiet, and let me sleep?"
Chance has made me graft some perpetual roses on some Bengales (common China) and I have obtained excellent results. The Bengale, which never freezes here, and is constantly in vegetation, and a really perpetual bloomer, is it not in similar climates more adapted to supply the wants of other perpetual roses, preferable to others which require rest part of the year? And, according to this idea, would it not be advantageous to graft perpetual blooming sorts on other equally constant bloomers?
 
Continue to: