DEBORAH CROMBIE: Spring makes me giddy, and nothing about it makes me giddier than roses, and especially the English ones.
I've been trying to trace the history of this love affair. It didn't start in childhood, that's for sure. I don't remember us having any roses when I was growing up. My dad planted bedding plants and flower pots, and my mom didn't garden at all. There was a glorious Lady Banks on the fence of the garage apartment where I lived in college--maybe that was the first. Then fast forward through houses and years to this house, twenty-six years ago, and the first few mail-order roses. Only two survive, a mystery pink hybrid tea, and this Simplicity from Jackson and Perkins.
Many more followed. Some thrived, some didn't, but I was hooked. Then a few years ago we lost most of them to the rose rosette virus.
Anyone with any sense would have folded at that point and replanted with something entirely different, but I'd discovered the English rose breeder David Austin's roses, and I couldn't resist them.
Graham Thomas was the very first, still with me. (It's the yellow one.)
Just the names of the Austin roses read like poetry:
I have Lady of Shallot. Munstead Wood. Princess Alexandra of Kent. Abraham Darby.
Gertrude Jekyll--named after the Arts and Crafts garden designer, thorny as all-get out with a divine scent.
Benjamin Britten, after the composer, a massive climber in an almost neon coral red.
St. Swithun's, named after a Saxon bishop, another climber. It's a pale, pale creamy pink, and smells like licorice. I love this one so much I gave it to Melody's parents in A BITTER FEAST. This bloom I put in the little vase on my piano last week--doesn't it look like a painting?
The Fisherman's Friend, a deep crimson, with a glorious old rose scent. This one was my splurge last spring, my pandemic rose.
But there are always more, if I can just find a place to put them!
This year I went bonkers and ordered three: Crown Princess Margareta, a gold climber; Heathcliff, a deep red (how could I resist that name?); and Boscobel, a smaller coral pink, named after Boscobel House where Charles II hid during the English Civil War.
I suppose there are worse passions... But it is a very visceral thing--it's like feasting on color, shape, scent, and language. They are calling to me...The Lark Ascending, Charles Darwin, Desdemona, The Poet's Wife...
REDS and readers, is there anything in your garden--or your balcony, or even a pot or a bouquet, that makes you swoon?
I’m thrilled with most any flower in my garden . . . the Rose of Sharon always blooms as do my lovely daffodils, but the lilac bushes are my frustration . . . .
ReplyDeleteJoan, I have altheas (Rose of Sharon) in pots on my patio, but one didn't survive our February freeze. I'm just going today to see if I can replace it.
DeleteYour roses are gorgeous, Debs! I wish I had the gardening gene, but I don't. It doesn't mean that I don't love and appreciate beautiful flowers though. Roses are quite the perfect flower. We have some lilies I enjoy. My daughter seems to have inherited her grandmother's, my mother-in-law's, gift of gardening, and Ashley has a lovely yard, with some rose bushes from her grandmother. That means a lot to her now that MIL is gone. That's one thing that I've always thought was special, that you can get cuttings from family and keep something going.
ReplyDeleteKathy, I bought my house from the family that built it in 1960. While neither of the daughters in my generation have much of a green thumb, their mother, Doris, landscaped her new house with bulbs she got from her own mother, who very likely got them from her mother. So I have iris, narcissus, red spider lilies, and one glorious Byzantine gladiolus that may go back to parent plants 100 years ago. I cherish every one.
DeleteI love those hand-me-down flowers. It's so nice to feel that connection with past generations. And they're beautiful!
DeleteGigi, it's wonderful that someone like you bought their house, someone who would treasure the generational passing on of beautiful flowers. And, Debs, your heritage rose plant sounds lovely, too.
DeleteI'm just started putting flowers on my balcony again. It's one of the things I did last year to help liven up the place since I was here all the time. My favorite is impatiens since they are harder for me to kill. Although I get lots of afternoon sun on my west facing balcony, so when we get to summer, it is too hot for them to do well. And I'm on my second six pack this spring already. So maybe I'm not doing as well with them as I thought I was.
ReplyDeleteMark, you might try geraniums. They should do well in your California climate. And some hardier begonias can take more sun.
DeleteGeraniums grow like weeds here in California. Mine bloom twelve months a year. They are a nice spot of color in January, when we sometimes have winter, as in it rains.
DeleteI have a thriving fragrant lilac in bloom right now, and I love the showy sweet-smelling peonies when they come out next month. And of course the showy yellow forsythia, such a bright spot in the spring when it's still cold out.
ReplyDeleteI had a rose (no idea of its name) a few houses ago that came with the house. One of the few ways I connected with my former mother-in-law was over gardening. When she came to visit from Oregon, she showed me how to prune it.
But I've never planted any roses. They seem too finicky. Are they, Debs? What are the easiest to grow?
For our climate, Edith, the easiest to grow are the old-fashioned multiflora roses. They need nothing but sunshine, are drought and disease resistant, and have no trouble surviving wicked winters. They are fragrant, thorny to the max, and not suitable for cutting. Mine are all leafed out now and will start blooming in June, gloriously for about six weeks, and to a lesser extant the rest of the summer, right up to the first hard freeze. We toss a little rose food on them once or twice a summer, and cut them back in late fall or they will take over the world. Ask at your local nursery.
DeleteI did try English tea roses when we first moved here. They lasted maybe two years before succumbing to the weather and my black rose thumb.
Thanks, Ann.
DeleteRoses are usually hardy to Zone 5, and sometimes Zone 4. There are a lot of roses that do well in containers now, so if your planting zone is too cold, and you have a place where you could overwinter it indoors, you might just roll your rose inside when the temps drop, and enjoy it that way until spring comes again.
DeleteEdith, I gave up on hybrid teas years ago, except for one mystery rose that has hung on. The shrub roses of different varieties are much easier to grow.
DeleteThanks. So the David Austin are shrub roses?
DeleteI love roses, Debs! I especially love the ones with fragrance. There were rose bushes in my yard when I was a child. Several pink and red roses climbing on our fence and a yellow rose, large and fragrant that I particularly loved.
ReplyDeleteYours are stunning and your photos of them are great. We do not have roses now. Our last rose bush attracted more beetles than I could keep up with and eventually succumbed after a particularly awful winter.
We don't have a problem with beetles here, just blackspot and powdery mildew. And sometimes aphids. I thought we'd lost on of our vintage climbers, a white rose called Lamarque, after our horrible winter, but it came back!
DeleteI love looking at your roses Debs, it seems the perfect flower for you! We have lilacs starting to bloom now too--they always remind me of our wedding day. The wedding was very much do-it-yourself, and we had masses of lilacs at the house. I'm going to cut some today and bring them inside to remember that special day--and my special guy!
ReplyDeleteIs this your anniversary, Roberta? Ours was yesterday. Happy anniversary to you both!
DeleteThe picture of your roses are beautiful, Debs. I like that you’re passionate about them.
ReplyDeleteEven if I don’t have some, I prefer garden’s roses then the cut ones sold by florists.
I enjoy looking at any kind of flowers as long as I don’t have to grow them because I’m not very good at it.
Living farther north, my lilacs are not actually blooming now but they are coming along, maybe next week ?..
It's so interesting to see the progress of the seasons in the comments here. Our hydrangeas are already blooming here, and our coneflowers are starting.
DeleteDeb, I must visit you during rose season, Gigi too, and see and smell these lovies in person. But only after I finish all seasons of Line of Duty. Thanks a lot. We are hooked but can only watch one episode per day. They we have to turn to something less bloody!
ReplyDeleteHa, Ann! They are not all bloody, just so tense!! We are into Season 6 now, and really enjoying it. Most of our roses are repeat bloomers, but the first spring flush is glorious!
DeleteYou are welcome in my garden any time, Ann.
DeleteDitto, Ann! Wine on the patio for you all!
DeleteLove your roses! I've given up on proper roses in Cincinnati and planted lots of the knockout variety.
ReplyDeleteIn NE Ohio, we had hybrid tea roses in a raised bed. Delightful Peace and Chicago Peace, Mr. Lincoln and Malibu. Old friends from my childhood, one of my chores picking Japanese beetles off their leaves. In Atlanta, with the guidance of a mentor in the local rose society, I planted grandiflora Queen Elizabeth roses with success, spraying weekly and using a soaker hose.
I've learned to savor what does do well in different areas. In NE Ohio, rhododendrons. In Atlanta, sasanqua camellias. In Cincinnati, after a winter with just the right conditions, spectacular redbuds and flowering crabapples.
Margaret, it was the commercial planting of Knockout roses that brought rose rosette here, so be forewarned. It's not that Knockouts are inherently more prone to the virus, but that they are planted close together in mass plantings, so the virus spreads. For those of you not familiar with rose rosette, you cannot save an infected rose. All you can do is pull it out as soon as you see the signs, and pray for the others.
DeleteI appreciate the warning! In 2009, we replanted most of the thirty-year-old south-facing foundation bed with blue globe spruce, ilex, and double red knockout roses, which have thrived in the sunny location, protected from the harsh winter winds.
DeleteThank you all for providing an overview of rose cultivation around the States and Canada. After four hours planting herbs and perennials, I took a break and read through the entire blog.
Your roses are lovely. I now live in an apartment with no patio so I can’t plant anything. However I can have shepherds crooks right outside my windows. So I have 9, filled with basic hanging baskets from the store. But they are colorful. Next year I will be able to put different flowers in the baskets. I miss roses with their lovely scent.
ReplyDeleteAnn, that sounds lovely! I have hanging baskets inside and out!
DeleteDebs, I love seeing the photos of your roses, with the names attached. I had a Mr. Lincoln at the old house that was tough as old boots. It survived several years of me having no clue how to care for it. It's a beautiful rose with a straight, long stem, but it fades faster than a soap bubble.
ReplyDeleteAsking me to name my favorite plant is like asking me to choose my favorite kid. Right now, though, I'm excited to see all the buckeyes--Yellow, Ohio, Red, Bottlebrush--in bloom, since I've been planting them around the property these past few months. And the irises are in bloom right now, so many gorgeous colors.
We had Mr. Lincoln, one of the many we lost to rose rosette virus. It was hardy for a hybrid tea, and dependable.
DeleteI adore the David Austin roses--I have two old roses, planted so long ago that I've forgotten one of their names--but I want a rose to smell like a rose scent--so I go for those types. The one I do remember is my Crown Princess Margareta--but not a climber. I transplanted it last spring and it seems happy in its new spot (three buds right now). My Beauty of Moscow lilac has faded from pink to white but still has that lilac scent. The tulips daffs etc are just about gone, but the oriental poppies are swelling into buds and the irises are about to bloom, the rhodies are blazing by the front stoop and a ginger kitty is walking across my keyboard, so I better stop and give him some attention. Good morning all and hope your Saturday is fbulous!
ReplyDeleteI love lilacs, Flora, but we don't see them much here. I don't think our winters are cold enough--except for this last one!
DeleteI'll post a pic of my Crown Princess Margareta when it blooms!
Oh no - my comment disappeared! I had said how happy I am to read about the joy your roses give you, Deborah! And I talked about the so-called Palatine Rose that my mother got from one of her historical society friends. I'm not sure and I can't find out anything about them but supposedly they were brought here by the early Palatines who settled here in the late 1600s. In any case, it is a very nice rose and I dug up a bit of my mother's so I have one too.
ReplyDeleteJudi, that's the sort of thing that will send a rose fanatic down the research hole! Apparently there is a very well known rose grower in Ontario called Palatine Roses. Maybe there is a connection?
DeleteOh, those are absolutely gorgeous! Oh… I am swooning. Beautiful! We have the fairy roses all across our front yard, and they are glorious. But they are tiny, and these are incredible! wow.
ReplyDeleteWhat are fairy roses, Hank?
DeleteLike Kathy Reel, I do not have the gardening gene. At all. But when we moved into our current home almost exactly 25 years ago, there was one rose bush in the front, in the space between the house and the walk out to the driveway. I'm not sure if we even knew it was a rose bush those first few years, as I don't remember it blooming at all until later. And often, it would only bear a few sad little blooms here or there. But being the non-gardeners we are, we weren't sure we could do any better, so we just kept it there and largely ignored it, though of course we weeded and mulched and those things one does in a suburban neighborhood. (Let me reiterate: we are not gardeners.) I honestly don't know what has changed, but for the past few summers it bore a lot more roses, and this spring it is full of buds. If they all come to fruition, it will be our best summer ever for roses.
ReplyDeleteSusan, our house came with a "heritage" rose. The house had been quite neglected, vacant for a year or two, and certainly there had been no attention paid to the garden in a long while. But this rose had survived, and now it is glorious. I'd have posted a pic but didn't want to confuse with the David Austins.
DeleteEvery time Debs shows me around her garden I'll stop to admire that heritage rose. It's a beautiful shrub, with full foliage and a nice shape, in addition to all the pretty red rose blooms.
DeleteThe pictures of your roses are magnificent. About 25 years ago, I rented a room in a large farmhouse, which I rented from other tenants who lived there. Less than 2 months after moving in, I suffered a heart attack. After getting out of the hospital, you would think I would quit smoking, but no, I decided to tackle my bucket list. I always really wanted to learn to really play the piano. I took lessons as a child and a teenager, so I wasn’t a newbie. However, I didn’t have a piano. Therefore, I purchased a Casio keyboard, which was missing an octave on each end. It still was to be a year before, I decided to find a piano teacher who would work with me. I now have two acoustic pianos, which I don’t play because they are terribly out of tune. I also own Yamaha electric piano with a full 88 key keyboard.
ReplyDeleteThe other item on the list was tending a garden of my own. I ordered ten roses of different varieties. I also bought a collection of different flowering perennials. I got them all into a garden at the right time and became a gardener for the next 10 years. The roses all bloomed and blossomed for several years. But over time, they became somewhat high maintenance. I couldn’t keep some of them free of black spot even with careful watering and pruning. And then there were the Japanese beetles. Ultimately, I had to move and I never again lived anywhere, where I could tend my own garden. Currently, I have some houseplants, which I will put outside for some sun when the season permits.
Gardening and playing the piano were great pastimes which I enjoyed immensely.
Gardening and music sound like a wonderful combination to get you back into the swing of things.
DeleteJay, what wonderful projects! And I suspect all that gardening must have been good for you. I do have to spray the roses for blackspot (today, actually, after all the rain we had this week) and fertilize just a couple of times a year. No beetles, thank goodness, at least that I've ever seen.
DeleteDeborah,
ReplyDeleteThese roses are gorgeous! I googled Princess Alexandra of Kent roses and saw the photos. I seem to recall something about a Princess Grace of Monaco rose? Her Serene Highness loved flowers and I think she wrote a photo book about flowers.
Among my favorite memories of my visits to England, Scotland and Wales are the beautiful flowers. I have not visited Ireland yet and hope to visit after the pandemic is over.
Growing up, we had beautiful flowers in front of our house. I think they were roses. I still see roses and other flowers in my neighborhood, which is quite a feat with the drought we are having in California. Perhaps some flowers are adaptable to the changes?
Happy Saturday!
Diana
Roses actually love full sun and hot, dry conditions. That doesn't mean you get to let them bake, but it does mean they might be a bit more tolerant of drought conditions.
DeleteI would think California would be good for roses. I know friends in the Bay Area have gorgeous roses!
DeleteDiana, my friend is a landscape gardener in North Hollywood and has a xeriscaped front yard with all native, drought-resistant plants. She always has things blooming in it!
DeleteI live in the Bay Area, and the hot dry climate here is great for roses. We have roses blooming most of the year. This year the roses did not stop blooming, a warm winter with a normal amount of rain.
DeleteThey are gorgeous, Debs. I presume you don’t have deer! We can only grow about three things they won’t eat.
ReplyDeleteRhys
Rhys, your view is probably a pretty good trade off for the roses. Do the deer come all the way up to the house? There are lovely container roses for deck or patio.
DeleteI only know of one nursery in my area that sells a few David Austin roses, and the ones I've bought there have done very well. If anyone is interested, I order mine from a nursery in Virginia called Cattail Creek, and they are gorgeous! Expensive, too, but worth it to me for the joy they bring.
ReplyDeleteI meant to say "have NOT" done very well!
DeleteI grew up in the era of those horrible, finicky hybrid tea roses that the gardener had to pamper and prune and fuss over endlessly to produce one or two magnificent blooms. Grandparents on both sides of the family tried their luck with hybrid teas, and did not succeed. But my earliest memory of a rose was one of those babies my grandfather planted. It was the best-smelling flower I'd ever encountered.
ReplyDeleteSo when, as an adult, I ran across Thomas Christopher's book, In Search of Lost Roses--about how 'rose rustlers' combed old homesteads and cemeteries to gather cuttings from rose bushes that had survived nearly a century of neglect--I was completely hooked. When Deb and I became friends, I realized she was hooked on the antique roses, too, and had a number of them in her yard that I longed for in mine.
Now my yard is rich with rose scent in the spring. I have a Marie Daly that can perfume my whole front yard all summer long, and a Zephrine Drouhin that is too large for the trellis I've trained it on, so I'm researching trellis solutions. The antique rose Maggie is flourishing by my doorstep, filling my entryway with gorgeous scent every morning. I'm eyeing the mangy red tipped photinia bushes that were the original foundation plantings, for the right sunlight conditions for "just one more rose--maybe two . . . " My roses, and a whole lot of wonderful iris, definitely make me swoon.
Ha, we covet each other's roses, Gigi! I'm in love with your Carnival Glass. I didn't talk in the post about the vintage roses. I have Caldwell Pink, Souvenir de Malmaison, what I think is Duchess de Brabant (I hate it when I lose the tags over the years!), Maggie, what I think is Climbing Old Blush (ditto,) Thomas Affleck (named after another rose grower), a sprightly one called F.J. Lindheimer, and gorgeous Texas-bred rose called Star of the Republic. All these old roses have history, and provenance. It's a fascinating thing to get into and I'm so glad to have friend to get into the weeds with me, Gigi! (Forgive the gardening pun.)
DeleteI love lilacs,especially their smell and for some reason I am obsessed with ferns. There are at least 20 ferns in my backyard and along the side of my house.
ReplyDeleteWhat's not to love about ferns? :-) I spend a fortune every year replacing the ones that I can't over winter.
DeleteNo roses in my garden, as it's too shady. However I certainly appreciate the beauty of this flower, and your roses are GORGEOUS, Deb!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Amanda!
DeleteI adore roses, but I gave up on the roses that were in our yard when we moved in ages ago - many had gone wild and those that hadn't seemed to have a welcome mat out for thrips and aphids and Japanese beetles.... And I always ended up with embedded thorn tips in my fingers every year when I pruned them. So I am in awe of anyone who can grow them because they are SO lovely, and I especially adore the fragrant ones. Right now I have a swell pot of red geraniums thriving on my patio steps. Sadly I put out the begonias I'd nursed over the winter too soon and they've all suffered frost blight.
ReplyDeleteI put out four pots of geraniums last week, a beautiful deep red. The deer thought they were mighty tasty the other night. Sigh.
DeleteHallie, rose gloves are a necessity. But I tend to be lazy when I'm dead-heading and not bother--and am always sorry afterwards. Some of mine, especially Gertrude Jekyll, are absolutely vicious. All my geraniums are just stunning right now, so many pretty colors.
DeleteI admire the roses in the neighborhood but have never had any luck with my own. I even bought a climbing rose from the Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham but it refused to thrive. So, no roses in my yard! I do swoon when my gardenia starts blooming. That perfume is one of a kind. It survived the big freeze but I don't know if it will bloom this year. It is still leafing out, bit by bit. The jasmine on the fence is still blooming, even with a big hunk of it missing in the middle. And our magnolia tree is in full bloom. Absolutely glorious.
ReplyDeletePat, many of the vintage and Texas roses I mentioned above came from Antique Rose Emporium. Have you ever visited? It's wonderful! Worth a day trip. My potted gardenia didn't survive the freeze here, so I have a new one and am anxiously awaiting buds.
DeleteGardenia! I had a big bush of it outside my childhood bedroom window. It's still my favorite scent (my darling son knew that and had my corsage for his wedding made of gardenia). It's hard to grow in a pot, though.
DeleteOh, and someone whose side yard borders the bike trail has planted it in wildflowers. Gorgeous! Bluebonnets, Indian blanket, winecup, daisies, sunflowers, Queen Anne's lace, and more.
ReplyDeleteTexas wildflowers are so gorgeous in the spring.
DeleteI missed seeing the wildflowers this spring. That's two years we missed our trip to Brenham for Round Top, right in the middle of the wildflower bloom.
DeleteI love roses too (and I'm with you on the names of the D. Austins.) Their survival is iffy here in the frozen north though so I have a few but can't get too emotionally attached. The flowers with which I'm obsessed? Peonies. I love, love, love them so much. Like roses, they can live to be quite old and they smell so good and make such beautiful arrangements . ..
ReplyDeleteI've got many roses here in Southern California which have struggled with the drought. My favorite is a gorgeous climber, Polka, with long stemmed big blooms that change from apricot to a pale peach.
ReplyDeleteMy swoon-worthy flowers are on my property thanks to generations past - we have a collection of mature lilacs in white, lavender and dark purple and right now I can literally smell their glorious scent drifting through the open windows (it's 77F/25C today!!!) Lilacs are one of my favorite flowers, despite the fact they come and go so quickly. Two weeks of heaven, and then it's another fifty weeks until you see them again. But they're also lovely as foliage plants with their heart-shaped, deep green leaves, and the old bushes tower over our heads with interesting, gnarled branches.
ReplyDeleteLilacs can live to be a century and maybe more, and that's part of the allure for me. I'm very much not an annual kind of gal!
Julia, I envy you the lilacs. They don't do well here, as our winters aren't generally cold enough. There is an old house down the street with a lilac bush, but I don't remember seeing it bloom the last year or two. I bought some lilac sprays from Trader Joe's a couple of weeks ago and had a few days of scent. Heavenly!
DeleteLove your Rose pictures!
ReplyDeleteHere in our Portland OR (the rose city) garden, our Lilacs are in full bloom just now, the Iris are starting, the Rhododendrons are blooming, though some are slow this year, perhaps because of a terrible ice storm we had, and the roses are just starting to bud. This is when we’re on high alert for aphids, and either squish or blast them off every few days. We only have a few now, the hybrid tea roses suffered black spot and I don’t like spraying if I can help it. But our Florabundas are fine and “Dick Clark” and “Lemonaide” will soon show color. We do have a “Peace” which I pamper and fuss over and bring in a few blooms at a time, but that’s risky as our cat thinks a flower in a vase is 1) to be eaten and 2) to be knocked over, spilling out the water. So we mostly enjoy our flowers on the bush. One other plant of note: our Columbine are stunning this year.
Rick, thanks for the garden update! I love Columbine but our sort of faded away and I've never replaced them. Maybe next year, as we are well past their bloom here. And I hear you on the plant eating cats! I have one, too.
DeleteJust gorgeous, Debs! I am a rose lover and those are just breathtakingly lovely. Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteMy grandma had roses but I don't have any of her, although I have her hosta and coral bells. Before David Austin roses were available, I bought a Bourbon rose Madame Isaac Periere and a miniature rose Rainbow's End. I wanted own root plants as I had heard that grafts weren't as hardy. Madame is a dark rose color with a raspberry scent. Rainbow's End changes from red and yellow to pink and white. I love my garden. Nice hearing about you all's.
ReplyDeleteWow, your roses are gorgeous!
ReplyDelete