Roses of Early June

It's the time I'm waiting for all winter - the time when all the roses open their blooms and fill my garden and house with their pretiness.

 

These photos were taken in the beginning of June, but now they are still blooming profusely with new ones coming along.

 

So one day of early June I cut one stem from about each rose bush that was blooming at the time. Some were not, so these are just a part of my now 28 rose bushes.

 

I brought them all inside and I just had to have a photo shoot in my small and amateurish soft box :)

 

Here is the line-up:

Yellow - Graham Thomas and The Pilgrim

Lower pink - English Garden and Princess Alexandra of Kent

Middle pinks- Evelyn and Brother Cadfael

Top pinks - Garten Traume and Gentle Hermione

Dark red - Munstead Wood and Astrid Gräfin von Hardenberg

 

In this photo there is also the purple rose which might be Novalis by Kordes, but as I've stollen it (psst, don't tell anyone!), I'm not sure of its name.

 

There's also, at the very right end, another dark coloured rose, which I assume it's the Dark Lady by David Austin, this being the last mistery in my garden :)

A close-up of the roses now.

 

Astrid & Munstead

Princess Alexandra

Gentle Hermione

Garten Traume

Brother Cadfael - I loooooove this rose!

Evelyn - I love this one, too.

It looks a bit like a painting to me

English Garden

The Pilgrim

Graham Thomas

 

I enjoy June so much, now that I have a rose garden.

I only wish my garden were bigger so I could add more roses.

Munstead Wood

A few days ago, there was a question on a Facebook page I subscribed to about which David Austin rose one would be.
A silly game, I know, but it made me consider it.
At first, I thought there was no rose that represented me, that I could identify with, but recently I realised that there is one - Munstead Wood.

The one with the velvety petals, not a too orderly aspect, with an intense fragrant, but pretty well endowed thorn-wise :)

I took several photos of it this year, unfortunately not one at its peak blooming time, but you'll have to settle with these for the time being.

I've clearly not pruned the bush correctly, so it looks rather loose. It's still work in progress.

Here's the bush in late May

 and here it is in early June

And here it is again, in different stages, wet and dry, in all its gorgeous glory

 

November Roses

This is a gift from my garden.
An unexpected one - fresh fragrant roses in November.

I took the photos in the evening dim light, so the focus might have tricked me here and there :)

Jubilee Celebration

The Pilgrim?

When we moved into this house, I was pleased to see that I 'inherited' 10 rather old rose bushes. They were not in such a great shape, as they had been neglected for at least 3 years and only given some autumn pruning, not exactly the best type of pruning, as it can leave them exposed to the winter frosts. As a consequence, they were mostly dead wood and I really thought some of them were just that. I removed the weeds around them and gave them some additional pruning removing all the dead wood I could remove and, as it was spring, I gave them a bit of rose food. They all rewarded me with their blooms, even those that seemed dead somehow found enough resources to send new shoots with flowers. Maybe the best of them (with close competition from a purple one I will discuss in another post) was this bush, one that cam easily be trained as a climber, at least if it is exposed south-west.

It's a rather tall bush (about 2m) with shiny dark folliage and repeat bloom. It bloomed once in June and again in August and, ever since, it has been bearing a couple of flowers all the time. Even now, there is one bloom and one bud and it's sending very tall shoots, which I will most likely prune, as I cannot afford having it so tall where it is right now - the house entrance. The flower looks a lot like David Austin's Pilgrim, with a pale yellow center and even paler yellow on the outer petals. It also has a strong smell which I love, but my nose is not trained enough to identify various scents. I hope, after the next summer season, to be able to identify it better by comparison to the fragrances of my labelled roses. Here are a few pictures from back in June:

The flowers have many petals and they open into a quartered rosette. They carry their fragrance from the bud stage and into the stage when they are almost spent.

Of English Roses

It's mid-October and summer is long gone. My garden seems to ignore this since most of the flowers are in bloom: the roses are putting out their last buds, dahlias are in full bloom, my delphinium and geraniums as well and the list goes on. Me, on the other hand, I don't enjoy this autumn so much - it's soooo cold and the rain just wouldn't stop pouring, so I don't have pictures of all the abovementioned flowers. I do spend my days indoors with my baby-girl, browsing catalogues in search of new roses and other plants....but mainly roses. I love roses, I love them so much that I spent yesterday morning browsing catalogues from Delbard & Tantau, sniffing one of the last flowers from Brother Cadfael (deliciously fragrant) and driking coffee from a new purchase I made at a flea market during the week-end. It drew my attention because of its pattern - roses! Yeah, I did develop some sort of obsession. When I brought my new coffee set home (saucer & cup & cake plate) I looked it up and found out it was made by a china company from the UK called Paragon while the name of the collection is Victoriana Rose. I am really pleased with my find and I now use it every day. I leave you now with some pictures taken indoors, of course

Bouquet of the day

My new David Austin roses have started to bloom lately, but because of the lack of time, I missed taking a photo of the first bloom from Munstead Wood. It looked absolutely wonderful in its dark shade of crimson, but the smell was quite disappointing. Today, I cut two blooms of the other 2 that started opening - Lady Emma Hamilton and Gentle Hermione. Gentle Hermione, although very pretty, has virtually no fragrance, not the first bloom anyway. It does smell a bit like the children's glue I had as a child, but it's not exactly an impressive fragrance. Lady Emma though, has the most exquisite smell. Its shape is great, its color and so is its fruity/spicy smell that I cannot get enough of (sniffing it right now). Here is a bouquet I made of these two roses (orange - Lady Emma and light pink - Hermione) and added a bloom of Leonardo da Vinci (darker pink) and some sweet peas.

My Susie

Or, as her father, David Austin baptised her : Susan Williams-Ellis.

It's the first rose to bloom in my garden and I bought her in November 2010 via bareroot order from David Austin UK. As I did not have a garden at the time, I planted it in a container and protected her with some old warm clothes from the winter frost and fed her with nice organic rose food during the blooming season. It is a free flowering rose and it has a delicate, feminine nature, not pretentious at all.

According to her creator, this is the story of her birth: The Mayflower was introduced in 2001 and has become a firm favourite with its charming rosette shaped flowers of pure rose pink, strong fragrance and of course its extremely good health. It remained stable until 5 or 6 years ago but then suddenly a stem with pure white flowers appeared: this is the result.

The fragrance is strong and perfectly Old Rose in character. Ideal for the border, for hedging or for a container. A delightful, unassuming little rose of typical Old Rose beauty.

And the lady who gave her name to the rose seems to have been similar in character to her plant counterpart (if I may say so): Susan Williams Ellis was a designer who, together with her husband Euan Cooper-Willis, founded Portmeirion Pottery. Susan was a great enthusiast of the English Roses and painted some beautiful water colours of them. What I can say, is that I am more than pleased with my choice as far as this rose is concerned. Here are some more pictures of its cute blooms. Her heart is cream colourd while not fully open

She has some nasty predators, too

But all in all she's charming in her discreet beauty