TIMELESS BEAUTY
IN OBSERVING A SIMPLE WILD ROSE, THE AUTHOR FOUND A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON THE GARDEN AT LARGE
I THINK SOMETIMES we spoil the perfection of our moments by looking for reasons for things to be wrong. We gardeners, especially, tend to be critical of our most flamboyant plants.
For instance, at the bottom of our vegetable garden’s fence is the great bulbous mass of a ‘Don Juan’ rose. In August it is nothing but a thirsty-looking shrub covered with the long-blown roses we call brown buns. But I know that in spring, after winter rains have slaked its thirst, it will be the most glorious eruption of bright crimson double roses imaginable. Maybe I should be content with that and give it a pass during its down-season.
The fence extends 60 feet from ‘Don Juan’ to the top post, where a few years ago we planted ‘New Dawn’, a rose of lovely form with shell-pink flowers. That first year, we were mighty pleased with it, and it quickly covered a large area of fence. But then, without asking, it kept growing, covering more fence, and then more. Finally, the next season it threatened to take over the fence entirely, so I decided to remove it.
Easier said than done. That rose had glued itself onto our fence with such tenacity, and its wicked thorns gave such little ground to my loppers and Felcos, that it took weeks before the fence was cleared. Or my thorn pricks had healed.
Sometimes a rose disappoints us early, but makes up for it later. We have the tea rose ‘Gruss an Coburg’ in a handsome pot on our deck. Coburg, Germany, was the home of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort. This rose’s greeting is in its luscious fragrance—sweet and subtle, very feminine and most insistent when buds are newly open.
Its first two years, ours grew into a scraggly mess. Early last August, I finally trimmed away at least half
JEFF COX is a longtime Horticulture contributor. This year, his column explores the ways our plants can teach us something meaningful about ourselves. He gardens in Sonoma County, Calif.
the woody stems and carved it into a semblance of a ball. It responded by producing a shower of flowers. Each stem opened one, two or three apricot-to-pink flowers to perfume our deck and dazzle our eyes.
On through the finicky phases of our highly bred showy rose collection—spray them against black spot, remove colonies of aphids from the buds, add rich soil to their beds and pots. Then I ran across a poem that asked if I knew “the secret shut up in the bosom of the rose.” I didn’t think I’d find the secret in the fancy hybrids that swan around our property like showgirls on parade. But we’ve always had roses no matter what the showgirls were doing, because the roadside and overgrown places around here brim with the California wild rose.
Rosa californica is a beautiful rose that grows wild throughout the coast and foothills of the state and in its mountains up to an elevation of 6,000 feet. Each little blossom lies open-faced and flat, with five petals in any shade of pink, from almost white to deep magenta. The flowers are lightly, sweetly fragrant, multi-clustered and followed by dark red-orange hips.
Musing over that poem, I kept my eyes open last summer. One day late in the season, I found three small pink buds on a wild rosebush growing alongside the driveway. I snipped them and set them in a vase of water at the house. I watched and waited for them to open, suspecting they’d reveal their secret when they did.
One morning as I came downstairs, three newly opened roses greeted me. Their petals formed whirlpools of pink silk, each clutching a golden bouquet of stamens. Up close, they carried a scent like the pure note of a coloratura. Perfect little roses.
By late afternoon the petals had unfurled too far, the roses flat and full blown. By the next morning, they were fading, and by dinnertime, ready for the compost bin.
I thought I saw the secret: Beauty peaks for only a moment, then fades. No sooner does an eclipse begin than it’s over. The moment the old year dies at the winter solstice, the new year begins. The moment that the sun reaches its apogee is the moment it begins its descent to the perigee. A golden age is only seen in hindsight.
But that wasn’t quite it. More was enfolded within the bosom of the rose. If I thought of the rose in its entirety, first as a young bud, then as a red bud, then as a perfect rose, then as a faded flower, followed by a fruit, I could see that its moment of perfection is entirely predicated on its other moments. Without the bud, there can be no perfect rose. Without the faded flower, there could have been no perfect rose.
All moments, then, share in the perfect moment. If we could but see it clearly, all moments are perfect.
But that wasn’t quite all I learned. As I looked at my gardens this morning, I realized that they are in the business of producing little moments of perfection in their plants, here and there, like stars sprinkled across a night sky. These moments are all part of processes ceaselessly ongoing in the garden. The whole garden is a tangled mix of processes bringing bits of perfection to life for fleeting moments, and then sending them on their way. It’s the processes of growth, flowering, making seed and fruits, standing in the starlight, blazing in hot colors under a summer sun, that deliver up to us, for the delectation of our senses, the beauty that nature holds in abundance.