My Favourite Twelve Roses
Words and pictures by Jill Weatherhead
Imagine a Persian garden of water, canals, cool trees and spring-flowering bulbs such as tulips and anemones, iris and violets. Summer colour is provided by colourful tiles, peacocks and…roses. So argues Hugh Johnson in ‘The Principles of Gardening’: “their most treasured flower of all was the rose – partly, it may be, because it went on flowering when other flowers were past. Almost certainly trade or conquest had introduced the perpetual-flowering rose.”
My selection is highly subjective but generally an outstanding rose should – surely – have perfume, hardiness, a long-flowering season and a full, well-petalled shape. A lack of thorniness is also highly desirable.
The so-called English roses, bred by David Austin, often fit the bill; but I have cast my net as widely as possible.
A gold rose that fades wonderfully to soft primrose is ‘Graham Thomas’, an English rose released by David Austin in 1983.
Named for one of UK’s finest gardeners of last century, the rose is loved by many, and the fat flowers bloom over a long season.
As the bloom fades dramatically it results in a delightful two-toned effect which feels softer and less formal. Vigorous, bushy growth to 1.3m is upright and can be trained as a climber.
This English Musk rose has a fresh Tea Rose fragrance and I grow it with the shorter soft coloured ‘Comte de Champagne’ in front which gives a big impact.
Or grow ‘Charlotte’ in front instead, a rose of particular charm. Soft yellow flowers fade to lemon outer petals on a beautifully cupped bloom packed with small petals at the centre, beaming out a strong tea rose fragrance; it then opens out to form a rosette shape.
Rather like ‘Graham Thomas’, above, the shrub, which reaches 1m high, is covered in blooms of two shades of soft yellow; irresistible.
Named for one of David Austin granddaughters, ‘Charlotte’ flowers for a long period and tolerates cold winters well.
Paler still is a charmer seen on the large arches in the rose garden in the Adelaide Botanic Garden, thorny ‘Mermaid’.
This well-known beauty has lightly scented, single flowers, lemon fading to ivory, and climbs merrily to 10m or so. A hybrid bracteata bred by William Paul in the UK and released in 1918, it is less hardy in the coldest areas.
Ramping up the colour again – slightly – to soft apricot we reach a rose I wouldn’t choose from its picture alone. But sometimes you like a plant a heck of a lot and sometimes you fall in love.
The intense fruity fragrance of ‘Jude the Obscure’ made me fall in love with this beautifully cupped, very double – but hard to photograph – rose; in fact the fragrance is said to be reminiscent of guava and sweet white wine. You must try to sniff this amazing rose sometime! It’s another David Austin I’m afraid, this one reaching 1.5m and one that I’ve seen growing well in hot conditions.
In the same garden I saw these beautiful hips on a swathe of hardy rose bushes which had finished flowering; it was late March, after a hot, dry summer. They were far from the house, but one of the first elements registering in the consciousness after arrival in this large country garden, subtle, distracting from the heat, reminding us of the cycle of fruit and seed and beauty to be found therein. Flowers are not the only joy.
Herbalist John Gerard published his enormous Historie of Plants in 1597 and wrote about several roses. Of Rosa canina (although probably true for most rose hips) he wrote that the “fruit when it is ripe maketh most pleasant meats and banqueting dishes, as tarts and such like” and he attributed medicinal virtues to rose hips of many species.
Sentiment plays an enormous part in forming our favourites. I encountered the deliciously crisp white ‘Blanc Double de Coubert’ in the Garden of the Five Senses (Jardin 5 Sens) in June 2010, on the French bank of Lake Geneva. The garden lies within the old kitchen garden walls of the Yvoire Chateau; in its design the idea of a labyrinth was primary and led to plantings which suggested all of the senses, and medieval-inspired green cloisters which surround a medicinal herb garden.
Roses are integral for the garden rooms of Colour (Sight) and Perfume (the sense of Smell) in particular. At the heart is a bird aviary complete with fountain and doves to represent Sound so all the rooms invite us to explore the garden.
The penultimate room has an unusual parterre (or woven garden) comprising only two plant types: blue oat grass (to represent nature) and contrasting white roses, neat ‘Blanc Double de Coubert’ (which represent civilizations); these are carefully entwined to signify the union of both in a garden – an important meaning.
Rosa ‘Blanc Double de Coubert’ is clearly a result of careful plant breeding; no careless wild species here. Released in France in 1892, it is a rugosa hybrid which can reach 2m high and flowers profusely.
With the neat arrangement of its semi-double pure white petals and its exquisite fragrance of cloves, Rosa ‘Blanc Double de Coubert’ perfectly encapsulate the symbolism of ‘Civilisation’, and is vigorous in the Garden of the Five Senses where it repeat-flowers and thrives despite the chilly winters.
Arguably less civilized is Rosa ‘Edna Walling’, a large rambler (to 4m) for a large garden. Superb white flowers, semi-double and lightly fragrant , appear in great clusters in spring: a spectacular sight. A Rosa multiflora hybrid introduced by (Australian) Alister Clark in 1940, the Digger’s Club call it a ‘shed rose’ and it is named for our most loved and significant erstwhile garden designer who I suspect would have approved of its gutsy thorns. The flowers fade to green reputedly; I have not seen this (yet) and the rose is said to be recurrent and shade-tolerant; bred for Australian conditions it is certainly hardy. The thorns are outweighed by the pristine white flowers of great character: a great gift for another person’s garden!
Whether pondering fairy tales (Rose Red and Snow White) or the (possible) symbols of the War of the Roses which ended, after about 3 decades, by the ascent of Henry Tudor to the English throne in 1485, it seems right to balance white roses with red. Not blue-tinged crimson, the stalwart of the romantic garden, but in-your-face scarlet which marries well with silver, even gray; which otherwise needs loads of green, and is complemented with a little floral orange (or purple foliage with care). I admit red is my bete noir (sorry); I see it strongly, dislike a coat of this colour, seeing it as overwhelming, and find a Flanders poppy of scarlet quite enough colour for an entire suit of black (whether on male or female), but then, I am a Melbournian.
So can I find a red rose of merit?
Sentimentality quickly intervenes.
My mother grew an awkward climber, if a bony scarecrow, all elbows and knees, requiring regular support, can be deemed a climber. (Admittedly it grew in the partial shade of a Rowan.) ‘Gay Sultan’ she called it; try typing that into google. ‘The Sultan’, however (as I’ll call it; it’s hard to find its name), has petals of wonderful simplicity, held in an elegant approximation of a satellite dish; I like too, that it doesn’t gush with blooms.
It’s vermillion, stare at you hot, not romantic crimson. Just don’t plant pink near it, I beg you. Its lack of scent says 1950’s to me but that might just be prejudice. If you know its name please let me know!
But romantic crimson-red has a great role in the garden (and in the heart) and here I am choosing two: one lighter, one darker.
Lighter crimson is Rosa ‘Father’s Love’, a Modern Hybrid Tea rose bred by Meilland in France.
Rich, velvety blooms begin in a classical Hybrid Tea bud and then, as it opens, the bloom reveals a massive unusual swirl of petals deep in the bud, with a wonderful spicy rose fragrance.
I haven’t seen this on a shrub in the ground yet but it’s the best hybrid tea flower – by miles – I’ve ever met, with that superb, strong fragrance on top of the great flower shape. Not only that, the flowers are said to last well in a vase, and the colour looks well against the slightly glaucous (grey) foliage.
Deeper crimson yet is Rosa ‘Munstead Wood’, another David Austin hybrid, with large deep velvet double blooms reminiscent of some of the darkest tulips on a shrub reaching 1m.
These dark flowers have a strong old rose fragrance which is said to be ‘warm and fruity with blackberry, blueberry and damson’. Sentiment plays a role here, too. Munstead Wood was Gertrude Jekyll’s famous garden in Surrey, UK; it’s where she worked on her many gardening books.
‘Colour Schemes in the Flower Garden’ is a book I devoured in my 20’s and it has not ceased to inform my garden decisions daily. So it’s hard not to like a rose that gives my hero due homage. But like many DA roses, it could be loved on its fruity perfume alone, so it’s easy to include as a favourite.
Many species, too, have enormous charm. Redleaf Rose, Rosa rubrifolia (Syn. Rosa glauca) was one of the first roses that caught my eye. It has sweet little single flowers on a shrub which reaches a height of 2m (often taller) and a width of up to 3m – clearly only for a large country garden and even then not for the faint-hearted.
The clusters of flowers have a short, early season but combined with the purple or gray foliage, sometimes coppery, and later the rich red hips, the effect is incredibly pretty.
This form which I photographed in a Somerset, UK garden has a particularly well-shaped flower and the shrub has few thorns. Redleaf Rose comes from the mountains of central and southern Europe and tolerates cold, as well as much of Australia’s heat, well.
Rosa ‘Blush Noisette’ took my breath away when I saw it in the gardens at Port Arthur, Tasmania, recently, where it certainly did not look molly coddled. Covered in masses of semi-double pale lilac-pink cups opening from soft pink buds, the blooms have a rich clove fragrance and repeat well; these were blooming heartily in February during a hot, dry summer.
Said to reach up to 4m (in warm climates; 2m in cooler), this shrub was just over 1.5m high. Why? Possibly pruned hard; probably due to lack of rain. ‘Blush Noisette’ is one of the oldest of the old Noisette roses, originating with a Musk-China cross in the US; it was then sent to Paris, and was introduced by Louis Noisette in France in 1817. I saw many pretty roses on that summer day but ‘Blush Noisette’ was outstanding in the dry heat.
For my last, deep, rich pink rose, I retrace my steps to the French Garden of the Five Senses. In the Garden of Colour (below) is Rosa ‘Melodie Perfumée’, a French rose with an intense damask rose scent, which was released in 1998 and is a Gold Medal winner. Deep pink flowers add to the charm of the garden that celebrates sight, where it reaches 1.6m, adding height to the riot of pink, purple and blue in this beautiful garden room.
Garden seats invited us to linger and absorb the remarkable vision – and sniff the air; this rose, I have read, is used to make perfume in France.
So, yes, I find I love the so-called English roses, bred by David Austin. These are charming, full flowers often with powerful perfume, on shrubby bushes, long flowering and relatively disease-resistant. The flowers are old-fashioned in the sense that they are very full and double, but also impressively scented, like those romantic roses of past centuries: ‘La Reine Victoria’, ‘Cardinal de Richelieu’ and particularly ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’, surely romantic just for its naming for the famous rose garden of the Empress Josephine, the first serious rose collector. (Imagine your emperor collecting your favourite flower far and wide with his armies for you.)
The style of the English rose and its ability to merge into a greater garden picture is the antithesis of the standard hybrid tea rose with its long sticks of blooms reaching out in all directions. These relics of the 1950’s could and should go in the vegetable or picking garden – well away from the front door – as they are particularly hideous in winter. (A few pansies underneath do not distract from the horror.)
But there is charm in other quarters too: in some species, in hybrids, old and new, whether Australian or European or from the US.
Winter is the season to plant bare-rooted roses. Catalogues are coming just now and if you order roses by mail-order, it’s exciting when the parcel of bushes arrive. But before planting in your sunniest spot, prepare the soil with compost and ensure good drainage. After planting, mulch well before watering in your new plants.
As with other new areas in the garden, consider adding a simple feature such as a seat, a bird bath or a sun dial – without overdoing it.
This seat, above, in the Garden of Fragrance in the French Garden of the Five Senses, is simple, inviting, and turns the garden beyond a merely visual experience; encouraged to linger, the garden becomes multisensory and participatory; more Mediterranean, I would argue.
I admire its simplicity over the busyness of Mottisfont Abbey in the UK, with its famous rose garden, below, even though I admire the edging of lavender and the profusion of foxtail lilies (Eremurus), iris and penstemon. I just think the picture needs more green.
When you are planning a rose garden I urge you to add ground-covers too so that – while showy in rose season – the garden is not bare at other times. Bearded iris, shorter than most roses, along with cranesbills, foxgloves, lamb’s ears and heart’s ease (Viola) can be planted in front of, and even beneath the roses. Daffodils and jonquils for early spring, Bergenia (in cool areas) for winter blooms of pink.
Fanflower (Scaevola) is a wonderful groundcover to soften the look and give gentle colour. Most Salvias flower in summer and autumn; short ones might be best, or tall ones behind. Evergreen groundcovers will extend the flowering season but importantly, turn the rose collection into a garden.
When I was visiting an aunt in Wells, UK in 2006 I was incredibly lucky to be allowed to see and photograph – one picture! – William Turner’s original 1568 Herbal. He wrote about roses, of course: roses ‘whyte and rede’; ‘Damaske roses, incarnation roses {and} muske roses’.
Not long after, in 1597, John Gerard published his Historie of Plants in which he wrote about roses, too: English wild roses, damask roses and ‘Rosa Provincialis minor’; roses red (probably deep pink) and white.
I think Gerard can have the last word;
“Of Roses.
The Plant of roses, though it be a shrub full of prickles, yet it had bin more fit and convenient to have placed it with the most glorious floures of the world than to insert the same here among base and thornyshrubs: for the rose doth deserve the chief and prime place among all floures whatsoever; being not onely esteemed for his beauty, virtues, and his fragrant and odoriferous smell; but also because it is the honor and ornament of our English Scepter . . . in the uniting of those two most Royall Houses of Lancaster and
Yorke. Which pleasant floures deserve the chiefest place in crownes and garlands, as Anacreon Thius, a most ancient Greeke poet affirmes in those Verses of a Rose, beginning thus;
The Rose is the honour and beauty of floures,
The Rose in the care and love of the Spring:
The Rose is the pleasure of th’ heavenly pow’rs
The Boy of faire Venus, Cythera’s Darling,
Doth wrap his head round with garlands of Rose,
When to the dances of the Graces he goes.”
Jill Weatherhead is a horticulturist and garden designer in Melbourne, the Dandenong Ranges and Victoria. (www.jillweatherheadgardendesign.com.au) and contributing author of Genus Cyclamen (2013)
Read more on Jill’s blog: www.thegardenatpossumcreek.blogspot.com.au
