For fragrance and charm, choose Beautiful Bourbons

With these old shrub roses, you not only get a floriferous display from early summer but you also get a sense of history. Anne Swithinbank explains why she’s such a fan

HE roses in my garden are still flowering and often continue right up to Christmas, their last brave blooms crystallised by frost. From November to February or March the plants themselves enter a dormant phase, and this is when rose nurseries lift them from the ground to send out – packaged but ‘bare-rooted’ – to our doors. If they can’t be planted straight away, it’s important to ‘heel’ them in outdoors by covering roots with soil to protect against drying and frost.

Autumn is also a great time to plant roses from containers, enabling them to settle in before growth starts in spring.

There's always room for one more rose; choosing from the thousands available is no easy task, however. As well as considering size, flowers, perfume and health, I enjoy a slice of history and love plants with a story to tell.

The term Old Garden Roses refers to

Tvarieties in cultivation before 1867, including a charming and fragrant group known as the Bourbons. Their interesting past involves a habit of using roses to form boundary hedges on what was once called the Île de Bourbon in the Indian Ocean near Mauritius.

Colonisation of the island (now known as Réunion) was started by the French East India company in 1665, and at some point later, settlers brought in China rose ‘Old Blush’ and Damask rose ‘Quatre Saisons’ to plant as hedges in the higher, cooler regions. These hybridised and, in 1817, seeds sent to France formed the basis of Bourbon rose varieties.

Flamboyant flowers

Characterised by vigorous stems and showy, intensely fragrant blooms that open abundantly in early summer and, sporadically, through to autumn, cultivars of these old shrub roses are available in white, red and stripes; but shades of pink predominate. Rose pink and richly scented ‘Louise Odier’ is a fine example.

Some are prone to ‘balling’ after rain, when saturated buds fuse and fail to open. Yet for me this creates a positive lottery effect, with cause to celebrate in

A classic Bourbon like ‘Louse Odier’ supplies richly fragrant blooms in the prettiest of pinks, and will repeat flower in flushes from early summer to late autumn

Like many Bourbons, the popular ‘Zéphirine Drouhin’ is well suited to growing as a climber