Air & Grace
Sumptuous pale-toned roses define a simple scheme shot through with the lime-green flowers of Alchemilla mollis and airy spires of sky-blue Nepeta racemosa ‘Walkers Low’
White grabs the attention: when we work with this, we get the best results. A clever way of using white is to keep it high: white height, in fact. Here at Clinton Lodge, the fadingto-white flowers of Rosa ‘The Garland’ start off cream-blush, a neat link to the pink old roses in the borders. As they get paler, the flowers shift their linking power to the sky: all is pale above, with the dark shadows of yew spinning out in perspective lines on either side.
Here’s what we expect of a rose garden, with the blush of the roses matched gently by the lime of the inflorescences of Alchemilla mollis and the blue-violets of Nepeta racemosa ‘Walkers Low’. The air colours of the nepeta are another link to that all-important sky above, while the pale green of the lady’s mantle connects to the fresh, almost spring green of the summer grass beneath our feet.
So simple, so clever and so effective. Remember this one and do it at home. Just because it’s simple, doesn’t mean you need to try to better this palette. The soft pastels are so pleasing and easy on the eye; you want to stay in this secret garden forever. You can almost touch the atmosphere of nostalgia: the senses are totally absorbed by the associations and connotations of this most familiar of colour schemes.
It would be easy to want more, to shake up the colour and introduce some contrasts. Tulip games would be fun, each year changing the scheme and indulging in wild colour before the soft-to-bright pink of Rosa ‘Impératrice Joséphine’ and the warm pink of R. ‘Comte de Chambord’ (one of the better old garden roses, according to Peter Beales) have even suggested their arrival. Before R. x centifolia ‘Cristata’ has started putting on its pure pink flowers, before the mid-pink scent-stuffed flowers of R. ‘Ispahan’ start to bloom. I’d love to know if these roses were chosen purely for the colours and scent or whether their names also had something to do with it.