ROSES, roses and more roses
If you order a very big bundle of sweet peas from me, or I know that it is your third or fourth order in a row, I have been known to write ‘No such thing as too many sweet peas’ on your postcard.
I think this applies to many things. No such thing as too many brass candlesticks. No such thing as too many pairs of gloves. Or tweed. No such thing as too many compost heaps, vintage terracotta pots, or cups of coffee. No such thing as too many pairs of brown leather boots. No such things as too many dogs.
Maybe not the last one. Three is a lot when they are big (the girls) or shouty (Hugo).
But definitely, definitely no such thing as too many roses.
It is my tenth anniversary of starting out as a flower farmer in 2023. In my first season, I planted the native hedge that is now twice as tall as me, and I planted fifty David Austin roses. I crammed then all into one bed, because that was the advice I was given, and jolly good advice it was too. As long as you keep cutting them and feeding them, roses grown close together climb towards the light, which means long, elegant, gorgeous stems. Not the stiff stems that are the dead givewaway for a hothouse-grown, imported rose, but leggy in a good way. Sinuous and sumptuous.
The only one that ever did stiff stems was Queen of Sweden. Too perfect. Too pink. Too polite. I gave it to my mother.
But after ten years, I can’t help thinking it is time for a little top up. I still love the cuttable, cupped shrub roses, although I genuinely grieve for the retired Jude the Obscure, and not just because I had to re-write my whole rose growing guide because I had recommended it so often. But my taste has changed. I want opulence and abundance more than ever now. I want wild romance. I want buckets and buckets of fleetingly fragile exquisite blooms, and then bough and boughs of burnished hips.
I so wanted to call this piece ‘hips don’t lie’.
In gaps between things, whilst waiting for the kettle to boil, last thing at night and first thing in the morning, I find myself sliding again and again to the David Austin catalogue. I make lists on scraps of paper so that in the middle of a shopping list is written, rather incongruently, ‘R. SPIN. ‘Dunwich Rose' – black hips? Too shrubby?’. I turn over a phone bill and it says ‘Adélaïde d’Orléans’ - Rambler – Sissinghurst? Height?’ I light the fire with a piece of newspaper with ‘R. SPIN. ‘Marbled Pink’ –amazing or awful?’ scribbled in the margin.
In the depths of winter still, I find it hard to imagine the flowers. I treasure the gorgeous article by Troy Scott Smith on the best rose hips (Gardens Illustrated, December 2018. Yes, I have kept every copy of Lucy Bellamy’s editorial reign) and take note. Both Kiftsgate and Wickwar get a mention, although neither are for the faint hearted in terms of their growing habit and I have seen Kiftsgate smother a small house. He is lyrical about R. rubiginosa, ‘similar to the dog rose, but with perfumed foliage that is reminiscent of apples, particularly after rain’. Oh, my heart. I cannot resist. I am so swept up in his descriptions of the different shapes and tones of hips, that I write down and underline ‘R. ‘Penelope’’ on my wish list before I remember that I already have one planted in the box-lined beds. He’s not wrong though; she does have great hips.
A note, there is a deeply boring version of Troy’s article on the Garden’s Illustrated website. The original was much better and you can track it down here. Or if, like me, you have towering piles of old dusty gardening magazines, thank your lucky stars you never through anything out, and have a rummage for December 2018.
These images are from his article.
Top - R. Kiftsgate. Middle - R. ‘Francis E Lester’. Bottom - Rosa spinosissima kochiana.
There is a reason for all this pressured decision making is that we are coming into the last month or so of the bare root season. Bare root roses are dormant plants, dug up from the field and shipped without soil. If you are looking at fruit trees, perennials or roses, now is your moment. Not only are they a little cheaper than buying roses in a pot, I find they grow away quicker. Planting a pot grown rose always means that there is a boundary where the edges of the hole that you have dug and the compost that the rose came in meet, and roots find that tricky. If you are going for pot grown, it is worth removing as much of the potting compost as you can and backfilling the hole with your own soil. It will take a little time for the plant to settle and form the fungal networks it needs to establish fully, but once it does, it will be all the healthier for it.
You can order bare root roses from David Austin now, both in the UK and the USA.
Other sources in the UK:
The Cornish Rose Company
Pococks
Peter Beales
In the USA
Burlington Rose Nursery
If you aren’t buying any more roses this season because you already have enough, I admire your restraint. Now is the time to mulch and to prune, if you haven’t already.
And now I’ve done all that, I am going indoors to light the fire and dream of warmth on my skin, the scent of flowers in June, and a jug of roses on the kitchen table.
