Rosa mutabilis is best known for the way each flower changes colours, often over a single day. Continue reading “Rosa x odorata ‘Mutabilis’ (Butterfly Rose)”
Gallery of Roses in Greenwood Cemetery, Jackson, MS
Greenwood Cemetery has one of the best collections of cemetery roses in America. While the roses are pruned, they are never watered other than by rain. I’m offering this celebration of Greenwood Cemetery’s roses largely without commentary so you can enjoy them in peace. Continue reading “Gallery of Roses in Greenwood Cemetery, Jackson, MS”
Droopy Roses: The Ones That Nod
Most articles online about drooping roses are geared towards fixing a problem. Cures suggested for a drooping rose include:
- Watering it more (assuming the rose is wilting)
- Watering it less (assuming its roots are staying wet and rotting)
- Feeding it (assuming the plant is lacking some elements)
- Feeding it less (assuming persistent elements have built up too much in the soil, or that the canes are outgrowing their strength)
- Staking, growing against an obelisk or training as a climber in the case of vigorous roses
- Hard pruning
- Diagnosing it with one of several rose diseases, then treating the problem
- Leaving it be (assuming that the canes will strengthen enough to support heavier flowers from the third year on).
It’s not hard to see how gardeners might get confused. Continue reading “Droopy Roses: The Ones That Nod”
Great Companion Plants for a Cottage Garden: Roses
Companion plants will bring out the best characteristics of roses – especially shrub roses – and help to make up for any weaknesses. While they’ll mingle around, above or below the roses, they should not compete too aggressively for food, water or space. Continue reading “Great Companion Plants for a Cottage Garden: Roses”
Gallery of White Roses
“There is something quite special about white roses… they are all purity and light.” – David Austin
I’m sharing pictures of white shrub roses and rambling roses in eager anticipation of the peak flowering season for roses which is a couple of weeks or so away in my part of the world. As my sweetheart would say, bring it on! Meanwhile, I’ll let the roses do their own talking.
Old-fashioned Pink Roses With Lots of Petals
There’s something about roses with many petals. For many, these romantic, soulful plants are the archetypal roses, especially if they happen to be pink and to have a good fragrance.
Some of these do and some don’t. What interests me about them is their flower forms, the patterns the petals take, and the way the blooms cluster together. The odd one you may recognise. Continue reading “Old-fashioned Pink Roses With Lots of Petals”
Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham, Texas, and Memories of Roses
A free-to-visit garden is not to be sniffed at – but then again, some of them are. Few visitors to a rose garden can resist leaning in to inhale the fragrance. We seem hard-wired to think ‘scent’ the moment after we think ‘rose’.
Shakespeare’s ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ can’t take all the credit. Scent associations trap memories like flies in amber in a lifetime’s layering of impressions. Continue reading “Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham, Texas, and Memories of Roses”
Susan Rushton 