The rose that blooms forever

The Untamed Gardener

“But what a good year for the roses

Many blooms still linger there

The lawn could stand another mowin

funny, I don’t even care”

- George Jones

Aisling Blackburn

I love them, especially the old fashioned ones, roses are so relatable. We all know them, have sniffed one or perhaps received one as a gift. To grow a rose is to take part in plant history. A symbol of love and desire it was Aphrodite herself that named it after her son Eros, by rearranging the letters of his name. He in turn gave a rose to the God of silence and so the rose became symbolic of secrecy, silence and love.

They have been around a long time. Fossil records distinguish roses from other herbs and plants that grew 33 million years ago by describing a five petalled flower and a serrated oval leaf similar to our wild hedgerow species today. The Chinese may have been the first rose gardeners, of which, curiously, all yellow roses are descendants . The cultivation of roses continued from Asia to Europe and to the rest of the world and still continues to this day. We can thank Joséphine de Beauharnais, the wife of Napoleon whose love of roses guaranteed that many old roses were bred in France, and were painted by Pierre-Joseph Redouté in his work Les Roses 1817 – 24.

There is a distinction between the old roses cultivated before 1900, and thereafter.

Modern roses are large single or multi blooms atop stiff stems, usually fussy creatures requiring regular feeding, watering, spraying and pruning regimes. Few garden centres stock the old roses nowadays as they are often disease prone and are even pickier than modern varieties in terms of their requirements.

Once upon a time garden designer Jim Reynolds, owner of ‘Butterstream gardens’ in Trim Co. Meath, collected a range of them that you could also buy there in his magical garden. Otherwise there was a specialist nursery in Cork, McNemara, ah the good old days....

Both Jim Reynolds and Helen Dillon were the designers in charge of some of the gardens where I worked and they were both very fond of Gertrude Jeckle, a famous horticulturist, designer, writer and artist. She liked to create deep borders of mixed plants, paying special attention to colour and tone. Roses played a large part, giving height and interest. Some favourites I remember are ‘Blush noisette’, an old rose, Golden wings , a modern shrub of primrose yellow. R. Moyessi geranium, red, single rose with huge hips, it is very tall, up to 10 feet or so. Mostly the roses used were modern but were still very old, and from the early part of the 1900s.

Although modern roses lack some of the relaxed beauty and scent of the old fashioned roses, they do repeat flower - just apply water and food after the first flush.

Thanks to the Grahem Thomas collection, who also has a rose named after himself, a beautiful golden yellow one, a new phase in rose history developed – the English rose. David Austin crossed both types to produce a plant that flowered repeatedly, that was disease resistance and also had great scent.

‘William lobb’(1855) is a moss shrub rose, that I grow all over the place. I just cut one of it’s thick lanky stems and using stout gloves- (the stem is covered in prickles), stick it in the ground where I want it to grow, it’s that easy. You can try this with R. Moyessi as well. In fact many roses will grow successfully on their own roots. July is a good month to take cuttings from a flowered stem. I also love growing R. Officinalis – the apothecary rose, whose origins date back at least 3,000 years. It is a no fuss once flowering bright pink double rose. I like undemanding plants and all of these fit the bill. I only have two hybrid tea plants, the modern stiff stemmed type, and both of these are fairly self sufficient, especially ‘Queen Elizabeth’. It was growing outside a polytunnel in the middle of the field at one time, which has now become a woodland/jungle. Tight pink buds opening to large blooms is the best beginner rose you will find. It is a grandiflora, a cross between the modern hybrid tea and floribunda (they have multi blooms), she stands about 10 feet tall and perfectly healthy, arising elegantly above the nettles and beneath alder trees (go figure).

I would be the first to tell you to plant your rose in a sunny, airy spot, as roses like the wind in their hair but once again I have been proved wrong!