Roses..
I’ve spent the last week scouring my favourite gardening books for the best roses to add to our garden this year. I was looking for the kind that might tempt Vic Brothers at Scarlet & Violet or that you’d find in abundance in romantic gardens by Isabel and Julian Bannerman. Perhaps it’s been given the ok from Sarah Raven for its scent and cutting qualities or appeared in the beautiful Cut Flowers book by The Land Gardeners.
Troy Scott Smith was my original rose teacher - I learnt about roses at Sissinghurst with him when I trained as a gardener. And Sissinghurst has been the most influential on how I love to grow and maintain roses. I’ll share pics of how they’re beautifully pruned and trained onto hazels and walls in another post.
See websites of David Austin, Peter Beale, Trevor White for all the technical details but here are my notes on ones I grow already or are on my lust list:
Shrub roses
Felicia - Bannerman classic. Adding for romantic drama in the lavender borders up close to the house
Sally Holmes - tolerant of poor soil, romantic single petals so good for pollinators
Rose de recht - flowers into November, small & compact, good contrast colour to pale pink
Hybrid teas ( Modern Bush Roses)
Duchess of Cornwall - popular cut flower, flowers for ages
Fragonard - good for fragrance, poor soil and cutting and because I’ve always loved Fragonard rose soap!
Timeless purple - poor soil/ excellent cutting/ disease resistant/ dries well and old fashioned cottage look
R. Alexander - great for cutting and crazy bright colour especially good with lime greens of alchemical and delphinium blues.
Floribundas
Champagne moment - to team with Boscobel and darker apricots. Imagine it would also be good with Roald Dahl
Chanelle
Its a wonderful life
Rosa Koko Loko - fab colour and early bloomer. For the permanent cutting border.Scentimental actually went for Ferdinand Pichard in the end - got to have one stripy one
Sceptre D’Isle
Shrub roses
Boscobel - land gardeners, goes with coral charm peonies,
Jude the obscure
Duchess of Cornwall - top of SR’s trials, Land gardeners recommend and I like the idea of not knowing what colour it might turn out - sticking with coral scheme
Roald Dahl - planted this in a terrace border of a country house I helped design, its been really healthy and looks wonderful in front of the red brick wall.
Rosa mundi - not great for cutting but oh so fun!
The Generous Gardener -repeat flowering and one of the most fragrant of all English roses. Can also be a mid size climber for an arch but has a tendency to get bare legs so underplant. Fleeting flowers not so good for cutting.
Ramblers for Hedges and trees
Blush noisette
Mrs Honey Dyson - don’t make the mistake of thinking you can keep this on a house wall as I did. Beautiful and wild looking. Needs to be over a hedge or the top of a garden wall.
Pauls Himalayan Musk - this has romped up a conifer in our garden and after 5 years it coming into flower is one of the highlights of the summer
Adelaide d’Orleans - almost evergreen, floriferous and romantic
Climbers for walls
Albertine - adore the dark apricot/ carmine buds that the pale pink flowers burst from. You’ll either love or hate how its over in big feint.
Madame Alfred de Carriere - Favourite of Troys, mine!, Land Gardeners - everyone seems to love her
Meg - very excited about growing this raved about rose for the first time
Mutabilis - no introduction needed
Grass meadow
Complicata - David Austin
Rosa Californica plena
R x Dupontii - David Austin
R richardii
Moss rose Henri Martin - Peter Beale - poor soil
Rosa glauca