Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
It’s often struck me how we treat our closest plant and animal companions – roses and dogs – in much the same way. We’ve sought them out and lavished love on them for thousands of years. Many of us are happiest when we live alongside them. They help us make our houses feel like homes.
We try to train them both: I dare say some of us have had more success training our roses. Continue reading “Why roses are like dogs”
Imagine buying a bunch of roses. Were it not for my picture, you’d probably have brought to mind hybrid tea roses – the ones with pretty buds on straight stems that are so widely available.
Breeders have been developing a new type of cut rose, inspired by old garden roses. Often mistaken for peonies, these blowsy beauties are almost like a new type of flower. Continue reading “Goosebump roses: garden style beauties for floristry”
This striking old multiflora climbing rose was named after the seven heavenly sisters of ancient mythology – the Pleiades – who are also commemorated in the name of a star cluster in the constellation of Taurus.
The name is very apt: its scented flowers gradually change colour as they mature, so shades of carmine, purple, pink, mauve to almost silver appear on the plant, creating the effect of several roses, closely intertwined.
Photographed at Coton Manor, Northampton, England, where it grows around the traditional, mullioned windows.
One late summer afternoon in the rose garden, the stillness was broken by an old, many-petalled rose bloom finally shattering in the heat. Continue reading “Rose susurrus”
Susan Rushton 