A Rose Ramble

Scented roses from the garden on my work desk.

The last week of November is peak rose season in my pleasure garden.
Last time I counted, I had over fifty different varieties, and I expect to make room for more. They scramble up trees, hedges, trellises and arches, they grace beds and borders, and they fill vases in the house. Best of all, their scent wafts through the garden and house. I don't have room for scentless roses; I regard them as a sort of low-fat icecream of the plant world. All looks and no savour. Roses should be inhaled as well as seen.

French rose breeders seem to have traditionally understood this truth about roses better than English ones - or at least until David Austin began breeding his now famous line of new but old-fashioned looking 'English' roses, which are mostly scented.

I am currently in love with the nineteenth century French climbing Tea rose 'Sombreuil', which took a while to get is roots down and start climbing up its arch, but now looks and smells so good, it was worth the wait. Also delicious is another old French rose, the Portland Damask rose 'Comte de Chambord', which makes a small, neat shrub and flowers repeatedly.

Sombreuil

                Comte de Chambord









     
One of my favourite Austin roses is 'Sweet Juliet', both for her subtle colours and her sweet scent.                                                              

                                                 Sweet Juliet

One of the best tall shrub roses for my money is the Hybrid Musk 'Buff Beauty'. It grew taller than me in just three years and is a cascade of scented pale apricot flowers at present. The Austin rose 'Eglantyne' is not so tall, but its flowers are bigger and strongly scented. I like to grow this rose not just for its looks and scent, but also because it was named for Eglantyne Jebb, the big-hearted and hard-working founder of the charity Save the Children.

Buff Beauty

                              Eglantyne











Some people think roses are a lot of work because they need heaps of care - pruning, feeding, and pest and disease prevention or control. This may be true for the Hybrid Tea bush roses which once dominated the rose garden landscape, but it is not true for hundreds and hundreds of other roses - which are also much more gorgeous to look at and to smell. I occasionally remember to feed my roses with sheep pellets or other organic fertiliser; I squirt aphids off the buds with a hose if I see them; and I ignore black spot and other things that some people strangely think is a good reason for bringing stinky, dangerous poison into the garden. My favourite Bourbon rose, 'Mme Pierre Oger', is currently covered in black spot - and also in roses. Guess which one I see.

Just two roses can scent a hallway if you choose the right ones.

'Albertine' is a really good choice.