How everything's coming up roses

We are coming up to rose time, or perhaps you are in the middle of this fragrant period already. There has been a significant change in rose growing trends in recent years. The stiff-stemmed Hybrid teas, with the enormous flowers, which were so popular in the first half of the 20th century, are no longer considered great garden plants. They tend to be highly-bred, diseased and short on flower.

Now we are far more likely to grow softer, more-elegant old-fashioned roses, or David Austin’s fragrant English roses, which are more shrub like in habit. They are not sheared off low like Hybrid teas. They need a sympathetic pruning regime. Remove the dead, dying and diseased in winter (when the 3Ds, as they are known, are easier to spot) and then reduce the long arching growths by a third at most. Use good secateurs, such as Felcos. Although expensive, they will last a lifetime. The exception to the pruning rule, and there is always one awkward one, is the Hybrid musk rose. These really resent pruning so only remove the 3Ds from ‘Buff Beauty’, ‘Cornelia’, Felicia’ and ‘Penelope’ etc.

The Hybrid Musk roses are my favourite group. They all derive from the Reverend Pemberton (1854-1926), who lived at the Round House, Havering-atte-Bower in Essex.He named 22 between 1913 and 1928 and 11 are still considered in the top rank of roses today. ‘Buff Beauty’ is probably the finest Hybrid Musk, although this was not named by Pemberton himself. However, it was introduced in 1939 by Ann Bentall, the widow of Joseph Pemberton’s head gardener. Ann and her husband must have carried on breeding following Pemberton’s death in 1926. The well named ‘Buff Beauty’ has large trusses of warm-apricot flowers that age to sunset-pink, flattered by reddish foliage. This large, show-stopping rose does well in warm positions, although it takes time to get established. It also makes a fine solo specimen in a lawn.

Hybrid musks normally flower in July, after the first main flush of roses have gone, and always produce a wonderful crop of flowers in late-September. Their chief attribute though is health. I have never seen a sick Hybrid Musk — ever. Many modern roses have the same sort of vigour because rose growers are now selecting for health and vigour, in an age where spraying is less acceptable. In order to select, the breeders leave their rose fields unsprayed, a practice begun in Germany by Kordes in the 1970s. Their bombproof roses always have Kor in the breeding name, in brackets. Many have made the Rose of the Year, but Oxfordshire played their part. The first British nursery to stock Kordes roses was Mattocks Roses on Nuneham Courtenay. And how I wish their rose fields were still there!

I am a particular fan of ‘Champagne Moment’ (Korvanaber), the Rose of the Year in 2006. and I have planted them among my phloxes and peonies. It’s a floribunda, with clusters of cream to apricot flowers held above glossy foliage. Floribundas are often frowned upon by garden snobs, who prefer to wrestle with old-fashioned roses. They often watch as their spotted leaves hit the ground. Many years ago there was a local radio show called Dig It and I had a spell of a few weeks. I was dismissed for having the temerity to suggest that a certain rose should be binned due to being a martyr to black spot.

David Austin roses are now naming much healthier roses too and I have just planted the first in their new breeding programme, ‘Olivia Rose Austin’. These are repeat-flowering roses, but this year I am going to add more ‘once and only’ rambling roses. They produce all their flowers in June or early July, in great abundance, and they tend to be healthy and vigorous. I shall be finding room for the pink pompoms of ‘Paul’s Himalayan Musk’, the best rose I know for scaling a tree. I always order bare-root now, for winter delivery. It’s cheaper and the roses romp away.

Suppliers:

Peter Beales — www.classicroses.co.uk/ 01953 454707.

David Austin — www.davidaustin.com/ 01902 376360.