Garden Centre
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
English Roses
Do you remember that Harry Enfield character ‘Loadsamoney’? He used to say ‘Gerra load of my wad!’ if that helps. Well, I’ve never felt like that, mainly because I’ve never had much money, but there is one time of year when I do feel like accosting people who walk past my house and yelling ‘Gerra load of my roses!’In particular, this beautiful, heavy-headed, English rose from David Austin. I think it’s Perdita, but I bought it from a place that had lost its label, so it’s difficult to be sure. In any case, the rich colour, generous scent and beautiful drooping tendency make this one the rose that I love best.
Here’s what David Austin says about it: Perfect rosette-shaped flowers quartered at the centre and of delicate apricot-blush colour. The growth is strong and bushy with polished, deep green foliage. Good disease-resistance and repeat-flowering. A rose of charm and refinement. Won the Henry Edland Medal for fragrance at the Royal National Rose Society's Trials. A strong English Rose, myrrh fragrance with a Tea influence.
To which I would add that my garden is not ideal for roses, having the wrong soil, the wrong aspect and being infested with black spot, rust and other horrors from the amazing lady who used it as a market garden for several decades. Even so, this rose never disappoints me. One flower will scent a large room, and a bunch of flowers is intoxicating. I’d query myrrh fragrance (or mine is a different rose, perhaps?) because the scent that I pick up is sugared tea with a hint of orange, nothing musky or heavy and certainly nothing as strong as myrrh.
If you want to grow English roses, there are a few things to bear in mind.
Unlike most of the old roses, the new varieties of English rose often deliver two or even three flushes of flowers during the season. However, roses don’t enjoy competition and it is advisable to surround them with plants that are not too robust. Roses can be very effective in large pots and half barrels, although they need to be watered regularly and fed too.
To ensure repeat flowering:
1. Always plant roses with a good manure base, and ensure they are in a medium which helps them to extract nutrients and water from the soil – my ‘lovely’ clay and chalk mix soil is less than ideal and my roses go into a hole that has been entirely backfilled with good topsoil and vintage compost.
2. Water well and feed twice each year with a good slow release rose fertiliser.
3. Deadhead spent blooms right through the summer and remember that the final flush of flowers may arrive as late as October, so don’t slacken off the deadheading in September!
Labels: David Austin roses, English rose, garden flowers, rose growing
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2 Comments:
We've got a space in our new garden for another rose, but given where it is I want scent over sight (it's at one end of a veranda, and I've just planted a Daphne at the other end).
What's your favourite scented rose?
Mark Hubbard
That’s a tough one. To begin, do you have a site that suits a rose? No rose will do well unless it has full sun, and well-drained soil, free of competing tree and shrub roots.
Then you have to ask yourself what you want your rose for? I choose roses for scent, but you may also want a certain colour, shape, size or height, a disease resistant rose, a prickly one to keep away predators or a non-prickly one so you can walk past it every day. Do you want cut flowers for the house? All these influence your choice.
The most common purchase is a hybrid tea, originally a cross between a tea rose and a hybrid perpetual, which will produce large blooms on long stems and are the first choice for cut flowers. Alternatively, miniatures are dwarf roses – I have two and they really do well and don’t expand beyond the space I can give them. Because of their hardiness, they are excellent for outdoor use. You might want a floribunda - a cross between a hybrid tea and a polyantha. These roses usually have more but smaller blooms than hybrid teas and are hardier than grandifloras and hybrid teas. Then there’s the grandiflora, produced from a cross between a hybrid tea and a floribunda. This plant is similar in size to the hybrid tea but more numerous and smaller blossoms, so sort of between the hybrid tea and the floribunda in flower size. My favourite though is the shrub rose, which means almost all roses not previously mentioned! Because this is where you find the English Roses developed by David Austin. And as far as scent is concerned, my money would be on either Gertrude Jekyll, a pink rose with a glorious sugary fragrance, or Ernest H Morse, which is actually a hybrid tea – bright red with a ‘knock you off your feet’ aroma of tea, myrrh and orange peel.
Above all though, look around you and find out what grows well in your area – some terrains are prone to certain problems – black spot, rose blight – and some varieties just love certain areas – Whisky Mac, for example is a Devon rose, it loves the red clay soil and thrives like nobody’s business, and it has a great fragrance as well as a lovely peach to amber colour touched with deep pink. Find a rose you like growing well in the neighbourhood and you’re 90% of the way to success.
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