Spoiled for choice!
Glamorous, easy-care shrub roses are increasingly becoming the objects of every gardeners’ desire
Here and there among the increasingly bare shrubs and shrinking perennials, have you noticed occasional roses, defiantly determined to open their buds and present themselves to the cold winter air? I’ve registered several, both in the garden here and over garden walls and fences in various places (I can never resist having a nose in people’s gardens, can you?).
It may seem a strange time to be thinking about roses but now’s a good time to plant them, either bare-rooted or from containers. Few gardens are without a rose or two, and it still wins hands down as Britain’s favourite flower. There’s such an array of tempting varieties to choose from, it’s difficult to resist adding one or two more.
For most of us, the days are gone when roses, usually Hybrid Teas, were grown in separate beds almost as though they were in quarantine. Nowadays, shrub roses, particularly old varieties and some of the newer English roses, are much more widely grown.
There are climbing roses, standard roses and Hybrid Teas but, increasingly, it’s shrub roses that are the objects of the gardener’s desire. They sit much more comfortably in modern, more informal plantings than Hybrid Teas.
This is a shrub that needs little cosseting and will grow in most soils. Its care is simple, an occasional prune, regular deadheading and, once in a while, a gentle feed to keep it in tip-top condition.
In a few cases, flowers will gradually turn themselves into decorative hips or heps, though, of course, it’s primarily grown for its flowers. And what flowers, too – satin-petalled and voluptuous in an array of colours from glamorous Hollywood red to palest pastel pink!
Sometimes, those flowers are simple, single and straightforward, with a powder puff of quivering stamens at their heart. In other cases, they may be so full they seem impenetrable and mysterious.
In most cases they’re loaded with perfume, yet their scents can vary from honey to spice, from apple to myrrh.
Thanks to the amalgamation of roses from all over the world, combined with more advanced scientific understanding and vision, aesthetic sensibility and a desire to produce roses that would do well here, our options are almost limitless.
One of the major proponents of this development is David Austin, whose range of English roses is second to none. They’re bred to be robust, long-flowering and scented, and cover a wide range of colour and form. Many of them incorporate the exquisite charm of the old roses, the Bourbons, Damasks, Gallicas and Centifolias that we associate with the romantic idyll of a rose garden, but bring them up to date. Rose ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ is deep pink with a ‘cabbage rose’ effect, becoming fuller and more sensuous as it opens. The name of Gertrude’s former garden (see below) is Munstead Wood and there’s a rose named after that, too. It’s enchanting, with full, deep crimson, velvety petals and scent, of course, described as ‘warm and fruity’. One of the best is rose ‘Graham Thomas’, an unusual warm yellow with abundant flowers, named after the great rosarian who was responsible for collecting together many old varieties of rose and growing them at the glorious rose garden at Mottisfont Abbey.