The rambling rose that rose ... and rose!
TAKE a look at the rambling rector of St Mildred’s Church. A magnificent sight, you’ll agree.
No, not the clerical chap up the ladder, but the impressive rose bush that he’s tending.
Since it was planted about a century ago, the rambling rector – so called after one was found in an Irish churchyard around 1900 – has grown and grown, with a little support from the surrounding yew trees.
It is now so big, at 30ft tall and 30ft wide, that from one side it virtually blocks the view of the 13th century church in Tenterden, Kent.
This image of it in all its sum- mery glory is a rare one because it blooms for only two or three weeks each June.
Gardeners have stopped pruning it and allowed it to continue rambling. It has also been deemed too unruly to manage by the team in charge of flowers at the church.
The vicar of St Mildred’s, Reverend Canon Lindsay Hammond, 59, said: ‘I have been here for six years and it has always been the same size. One of my parishioners has just turned 90 and she remembers it as a big rose bush as a child.
‘Visitors don’t notice it at first because it is round the side of the church but when they do they are bowled over by it.’
He added: ‘The town council maintain the grounds but their gardener doesn’t bother with it. We also have quite a few people on the church flowers team but it is too much for them. We just let it ramble away and do what it likes.’
Leigh Hunt, principal horticulturist for the Royal Horticultural Society, said: ‘Typically we would expect it to flower around mid-June for around two weeks.’
He said the plant was believed to have been named by the Daisy Hill nursery in Newry, Northern Ireland, after staff discovered one growing in a rectory garden around 1900.