Just after the war, I bought a bush of the Rosa pimpinellifolia hybrid ‘Stanwell Perpetual’. A chance cross with a Portland rose, it had the unique quality within its group of being repeat flowering. Its most striking features were its double soft pink flowers of old rose appearance and its delicious fragrance. It struck me […]

Up to the end of the 18th century the gallica garden varieties seem scarcely to have been appreciated in France. Botanists were only interested in Rosa gallica, named thus by Linnaeus in 1759 because a specimen had been sent to him from France. So far as growers were concerned, they were interested only in R. […]

Scots Roses are cheerful little roses. They have a special character that is very appealing and to those who make their acquaintance, they are a delight and may become a passion! Although the individual flowers are only about 5cm (2 inches) across, they are usually produced in such profusion that a single shrub can provide […]

Striped roses? Well, we all know ‘Rosa Mundi’ ( more properly called Rosa gallica ‘Versicolor’), and ‘Honorine de Brabant’, and ‘Ferdinand Pichard’ of course, and perhaps ‘Commandant Beaurepaire’ too (was he as flamboyant as his rose?). But there were many more in their heyday, and some are still grown in those great rose collections at […]

Part of our fascination with roses stems from their extraordinary variety. No other group of plants in horticulture seems capable of producing such an array of wonderful colours and forms. Yet what is sometimes overlooked is that this applies equally to the diversity of their fragrance. Famous old varieties such as ‘Lady Hillingdon’, ‘Mme Isaac […]

Legends accrued to the rose long before it became overlaid with Christian imagery. According to a Persian legend, the nightingale fell in love with the white rose and flew down to embrace it. But she pierced her breast upon its sharp thorns, and from the drops of blood falling on earth grew the first deep […]

The name Rosa chinensis was given by Jacquin to a cultivated Chinese rose in 1768. Jacquin’s drawing is very feeble, showing a single stem and a bud, but with the characteristic small, acuminate leaflets, and close to ‘Semperflorens’. Later the name came to refer to two of Hurst’s Stud Chinas, ‘Old Blush’ syn. ‘Parson’s Pink’, […]

On a warm summer’s day on 16 June 1830, the Board Room of the Horticultural Society in Paris was filled with roses and perennial plants. Antoine Jacques, the distinguished Head Gardener to the Duke of Orleans (who was to become King of France within the next few weeks), was displaying to his colleagues his latest […]

The first part of this article traced the history of a unique collaboration between two gifted men, both passionate plant-lovers – one, a 19th-century king of France, immensely rich and willing to spend a fortune on restoring his domains covering over 70,000 hectares (about 175,000 acres), the other a talented gardener in charge of the […]

In his book of 1894, The Book of the Rose, A. Foster-Melliar attributed this verse to Sappho, a Greek poetess who was born about 600 BC.
“Would Jove appoint some flower to reign
In matchless beauty on the plain…