A Rosy Post

The roses are looking lovely at the minute, the warm, dry, sunny weather suits them - they hate rain so the past few summers have been miserable for them.

We have over 100 roses in the garden, with over 70 different varieties but a few really do stand out among the crowd - for disease resistance, scent, prolific flowering....I thought I would share them with you!


Rosa virginiana

A wild rose from America, it makes a lovely hedge with bright pink single flowers which the bees love, followed by bright red hips and beautiful autumn colour - it grows quickly and can be easily clipped into a hedge or allowed to run free. It's also disease free.

Queen of Denmark

An old alba rose with a delicious scent and beautifully formed pale pink blooms...very healthy, it makes a large shrub.

Ispahan

A damask rose with double pink blooms in abundance, whose heady scent fills the air of a warm evening, it blooms for a longer period than most of the old roses - through summer into autumn. Although described as a shrub, we grow ours along posts and wire as it is in a relatively shady position beneath trees, facing east.

Blush Noisette

What can I say except you have to see this in the flesh to appreciate the volume of flowers - it is literally covered in thousands of blooms and buds. The flowers are small, in clusters with a strong clove scent, the foliage rich and glossy. It forms a vigorous shrub / climber which reached 6-8 feet.

Bonica

A continual flowering shrub rose with clear pink flowers, good disease resistance and attractive foliage - the flowers are semi double. Again, ours is grown in semi shade, facing east and still flowers its socks off!

Rose Camaieux

A lovely old gallica rose with flowers heavily striped and splashed with a deep pink which then beautifully fades to lilac grey. A lovely fragrance and not very big so could be grown in a large pot.

Lastly - I'm quite excited by this rose which I featured in a winter post when the rose was purchased. 

Rosa multiflora plataphylla Seven Sisters (Try saying that after a few glasses of wine!)

I planted it in a gap at the base of the hawthorn hedge along the lane, facing north and forgot all about it. I was driving up the lane this evening and noticed a splash of colour. It is covered in bloom despite its size. It will hopefully scramble through the hedge in time. There is a better description than I could give on the internet - click here to read. Basically its name refers to the various shades of pink / purple blooms and it does well on poor soils.