Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
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’ve found myself in the middle of a series of posts about flowers that change colour as they open. Though I don’t have pictures to prove it, people who grow Rosa ‘Dream Come True’ say as the petals gradually redden, the yellow pales to creamy white. Continue reading “Rosa ‘Dream Come True’”
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”
To continue this week’s rose theme, three perspectives of Rose ‘Strawberry Hill’, taken at RHS Hampton Court Flower Show several years ago.
Forcing roses for a show often changes their character: flower size, colour and even form can show subtle or major differences from their typical appearance in the garden and you can see that here if you’re familiar with the rose. Continue reading “Rosa ‘Strawberry Hill’”
