Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
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”
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”
Any rose producing round, tomato-like hips with long, wriggly appendages is a rugosa. The edible, orange-red hips turn sweeter after a frost and provide a good source of antioxidants and vitamin C. While the comparison with tomatoes or crab apples is more common, they remind me of Christmas tree baubles. Continue reading “Hip-Bearing Roses: Rugosas”
I’m aware that rose cultivars achieve something approaching immortality when small parts of the plant are passed from person to person down the generations, but it still seems amazing to think that Rosa ‘Queen Of Denmark’ has been around since 1816.
Its bicentenary came and went with less fanfare than that accorded a human queen, but the important thing is that people are quietly growing it around the world. You may know it as Rosa ‘Königin von Dänemark’. Continue reading “Rosa ‘Queen of Denmark’ | Pink Alba Rose”
HeyJude is challenging us to compare a colour picture with a black and white version and say which we prefer and why. While b&w most obviously lends itself to landscapes or portraits, I wanted to try some flowers. Continue reading “Colour or Black and White?”
A rambling rose will grow against almost any garden structure and can be encouraged to scramble into a tree. Most ramblers need to be tied to, or woven around, their support while the canes are still young and flexible.
If you only check one thing before buying a rambling rose, make it the height, which should be a good match for the structure it’s going to be growing against. A common mistake is to choose too big a rambler: you’ll have to keep cutting away potential flowering stems to prevent your rose from completely swamping the arch, arbour, obelisk or trellis. Here are some ways to support rambling roses that will show off these beautiful plants to their best: Continue reading “Beautiful Ways To Train And Support Rambling Roses”
