Plant your roses in frames six by three. Pitch rather flat, as I find when the pitch is steep it forces them too much in the spring. The earth at the back of the frame eighteen inches from the glass. The frame sunk twelve or fourteen inches. Eight roses to a frame. Eighteen inches of good soil for the plants to grow in, and I think the result will be satisfactory. To grow M. Niel or other tender climbers I should have a pit six by six. Excavate the centre two feet and a half. Board up twelve inches inside from outside of frame, and plant your roses in this space, but have your earth in this space eighteen inches from the glass at back of frame. I have an M. Niel planted in this way, and it has given me thirty fine roses this season to date. In the fall I cut my teas back to about eight inches from the glass, close my sash when I leave my place in Nov., sometimes later, and they are never opened till April. I seldom lose a rose if I plant in spring or early summer.

My roses do better not to have the glass covered. I have tried all kinds of covering, but have discarded everything. What roses in pits or frames suffer from is not cold, however intense, but warmth. Last winter in the pit where I have my M. Niels and a few teas planted, some boys broke the glass before I returned. I found some eight or ten lights broken, the lower part of the pit filled with snow. The thermometer had registered five degrees below zero in my grapery. I thought my roses were killed. They came out all right and have never done better; but some fifty cuttings which were pulled off in September - teas and hybrids - were all killed but three.

I do not try to force my roses in spring, but keep them back as much as possible. I picked my first tea rose the fifteenth of May. The first " Jack " outside bloomed the eighth of June.

I have a number of roses that have been growing in pits five years. The M. Niels did not give me much bloom the first two years, but since that have done well. I take my sashes off about the tenth of May. The Hybrid Teas grown in this manner do finely.

I would say that anyone will have fair success growing teas in this way; by taking four boards any size and nailing them together, cover in winter with boards, but in such a manner that rain or melting snow will not run into the pit.

Amherst, June 13, 1887.