Unusual roses at Hinton Ampner
Hinton Ampner is a great place to visit in midsummer to see huge roses rambling through trees. One of the biggest is Rosa brunonii, which John thinks may well have been planted by Dutton himself. There are also ‘Kiftsgate’, ‘Rambling Rector’ and the delightful ‘Wedding Day’, with its apricot-coloured buds opening to simple white flowers with yellow centres, and then fading to pink.
These enormous roses light up the yews they scramble over and need no maintenance at all. Growing against the house are two other ramblers: Rosa banksiae ‘Lutea’ (yellow flowers) and R. banksiae normalis (white flowers). These have smothered much of the house in just seven years. They flower in late spring and, now that they’ve filled the space, John manages them by removing much of the strong, new growth produced after flowering to leave the older, twiggy growth to carry the flowers in the following year.
In a shrub border gracing one of the terraces, two large, thorny roses jostle for space with other shrubs:
‘Cantabrigiensis’, with charming yellow flowers, and R. moyesii ‘Geranium’, which carries deep red blooms followed by flagonshaped hips. The single, opencentred flowers of these species are great for insects, allowing them to access the nectar and pollen. John’s favourite rose at Hinton Ampner is Wilson’s rose (R. longicuspis sinowilsonii), which has huge, glossy leaves that are coppery-red when they first emerge. It grows to over 10m (32ft) tall, so he admits it’s not a plant for most gardens!