Rose Balling: Rosa Eglantyne

 

What causes rose balling?  Rose balling is an annoyance that dominates in a damp, cool summer exactly like the one we endured in sunny Derbyshire in 2012.  Flower buds develop normally but fail to open fully.  Wet weather saturates the outer petals and when the sun finally puts in an appearance and scorches the flower dry, the outer petals are fused together preventing full opening.  These fused petals dry to a crisp, brown appearance.   

Rose balling can be a problem if you've planted roses in a partially shaded site, and you've got a penchant (as I) for roses with a multitude of thin petals.  Rosa Eglantyne and Geoff Hamilton are particularly vulnerable in my garden, whilst my peonies and camellias appear to be thus far unaffected.  Clearly the site is the predominant problem. 

 

Standard advice seems to be pruning to open up a lovely goblet shaped bush thus enabling good air circulation and rapid drying of the flower buds after rainfall; watering in the evenings only (laughable advice last summer); removing balled buds promptly before grey mould sets in and infects both host and nearby plants with a whole new set of problems; and rather drastically, removing or cutting back overhanging shrubs and trees.

 

Reading this advice last year on the RHS website finally prompted me to tackle my knackered old Warwickshire Drooper plum tree, stalwart of hundreds of jars of my world famous spiced plum chutney (thank you Delia.)  More of that in a forthcoming post.

On Eating Roses Whilst The Kettle Boils

You know that old Christmas joke about finding yourself standing at the kitchen sink eating roses for breakfast as the kettle boils? Except we know it's not a joke, don't we...

In my defence, at least I haven't taken to greeting the postman drink in hand; even I baulk at hard liquor before martini o'clock.  The last autumnal traipse across the Chunnel coincided with SuperU's deal on Bombay Sapphire; 70cl for 12euro and I managed to get the last 6 bottles by clambering onto the bottom shelf and stretching to the very back of the top shelf.  Clearly lesser mortals, locals and les rosbifs were too embarrassed to clamber.  Me?  I'd climb Everest for a deal like that.

 

My new favourite clients and I are planning to restock their rose beds.  I'm gently nudging them towards a themed approach, having already surrendered all hope of enticing them into a mixed border design.  It's their garden, when all's said and done.  I'm thinking Song of Songs; I'm thinking Shakespeare; I'm thinking people they actually have in their address book.  I know; they are really lovely clients.  We'll be sticking with David Austin, as his really are the best and most deliciously fragrant English roses.

 

Just have a look at this new introduction for 2013, The Lark Ascending, described thus,

 

photo source: http://www.davidaustinroses.com/english/Showrose.asp?Showr=6835

"A delightful rose that illustrates the great diversity that is now to be found among English Roses.  The flowers are cupped in shape with about twenty petals in each bloom.  They are medium in size and of a pleasing light apricot colouring, produced from the ground upwards in heads of up to fifteen, nicely spaced blooms.  They have a light fragrance that has been observed to vary form one flower to another.  Some of them are of Tea scent while others move towards the scent of myrrh.

The name is taken from Ralph Vaughan-Williams' piece of music, which was recently voted Britain's favourite by listeners to the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs."

 

 

Rosa Constance Spry & Zantedeschia Aethiopica Crowborough

This most beautifully scented of all David Austin's climbers, mixed in with my MiL's Easter lilies, Zantedeschia aethiopica 'Crowborough' and a repellent zebra striped invasive grass that I so dislike I refuse to remember its name.  But just look at that rose; not a speck of blackspot.  "Constance Spry" smells like my childhood Tiny Tears.

Part of November's Slacker Diaries Part 22 catch-up posts...

If I Just Lay Here, Would You Lie With Me And Just Forget The World?

Back home is sunny Derbyshire.  Although it's raining right now, a little after sunset, and by the look of things, my garden needs it.  Cooling, low-lying clouds envelop the valleys and shrink my world to more immediate concerns.  The roses have come with their second flush, the lilies are all about to pop and a couple of perfectly beautiful baby-cheek pink lilies are already giving up their delicious scent to the warm garden air.  The pinks are pretty much done, my most favourite rose Tess of the D'Urbervilles is climbing sweetly through the Akebia Quinata and the Merlot vine, nudging the espalier pears towards the sun and autumn sweetness.  The climbing Borlotti beans are already showing, the sweet peas struggling against my natural inability to grow them successfully, and everywhere my kitchen garden looks parched just waiting, waiting for the reviving drenching of midsummer rainfall.  Rainfall at this time of year always always makes me think of that most perfect, perfect scene from Lady Chatterley.  And of you.

And still the rain falls, splishying splashing onto the window ledges through open windows as I give my house the airing its needed for so many months.  I'm home, and listening to these tracks first heard this summer on Radio Caroline.

Frost Damaged Terracotta Pots

I've had a pair of these beauties for years, filled with standard roses (which I loathe).  Last autumn mid-prune, I finally became so incensed with the rampant blackspot I reached down and hacked the stem in half.  Then reached over to it's twin and decapitated that one, too.  The sense of relief was wonderful; at last the bloody things were gone.  I burned the roses, emptied out both pots and gave them a good scrubbing with bleached water, then left them standing empty over the winter.  I think this year the prolonged snow and freezing temperatures overwhelmed them, and my beloved "bee hive" pots are ruined.  Maybe it was only the contents holding them together.

Rosa Eglantyne Against Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Louis MacNeice, Snow

Rosa Constance Spry

Just after dawn, on a cold and chilly early spring morning, this photo taken leaning out from the dining room windows.

Comtesse du Barry And Cauliflowers

Jill Dupleix writes in this week's Times how the humble cauliflower is forever linked to Comtesse du Barry, one of King Louis XV favourite mistresses. She fled the Revolution to England, only to return to Paris in 1793 to die at the guillotine on 8 December.

Escoffier immortalised her in several sublime creations, most notably Creme du Barry, at it's most simple a silkily smooth dish of pureed cauliflower mixed with divinely soft pureed buttery potato. Try Jill's cauliflower and Parmesan soup too; just the perfect supper after a long day up in the big smoke.

Rosa Comtesse du Barry

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday

"See Mrs Grey she's proud today because her roses are in bloooom"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUzs5dlLrm0

Rosa "Rosa Mundi"

Rosa "The Pilgrim"

Rosa "Geoff Hamilton"

Rosa "Ispahan"

Rosa The Generous Gardener

Photographed at David Austin Roses, Albrighton.

On Lists Made In The Library During Wet Afternoons In Early Autumn

17th century Persians prized tulips, irises, hyacinths and roses in their gardens. List of plants Vita Sackville-West brought home to Long Barn in 1926;

Iris persica

Iris stylosa - her beloved iris

Anemone fulgers - scarlet

Gladiolus segetum - pink

colchicums

Tulipa sylvestris - little nodding golden tulips

Tulipa polychroma - yellow & white

Tulipa ostrowkiana - flame orange

Iris susiana - white with dark veins

Iris tuberosa - the widow iris

Crown Imperials

Persian yellow roses

Rosa foetida persiana

Isfahan / Ispahan - pink damask

La Réve* - Rosa lutea derived

Star of Persia* - " "

Tulipa aucheriana - most splendid of all, "like an old and rich brocade," the yellow-splashed rich rose pink tulip

* always treasured in her gardens subsequently

Midsummer

First, choose a night that keeps the heat of day.

Next, order cool breezes from willow trees

soaked overnight in dark mysteries. Then,

remove bath from bathroom and place amidst

a filigree of ferns in folds of lime trees.

Now, frost rim of bath with silver moonlight,

line base with lemon verbena leaves and

place wild honeysuckle on taps. Slowly,

fill to brim with infusion of rosemary.

Order peacocks to open a jewelled screen.

When all is secret and silent remove clothes;

consume fig and elderflower salad.

Roll in rose petals, place parsley in ears

submerge body in water, dissolve all fears.

Rebecca Farmer

Rosa "Eglantyne," "Sceptre'd Isle," "Rosa Mundi," "Septre'd Isle."

Sunday Morning Safe And Sound

He's home from Afghanistan. Safe and sound and in one piece. Phew. Rosa "Constance Spry."

Rosa Margaret Merril

David Austin describes Rosa "Margaret Merril" thus; Dainty, high-centred buds opening to white open flowers overlaid with a satin-pink sheen. These possess a delicacy not frequently found in modern roses, and they have a quite exceptional fragrance. Dark green foliage. Alan Titchmarsh describes Margaret Merril as one of his most favourite, and certainly a most fragrant rose.

These roses figure strongly at Beth Shalom. When it opened in September 1995, it was the first dedicated Holocaust Memorial and Education Centre in Britain. It was called Beth Shalom, the place of peace. It soon became a place of education, a place of memory, a place of testimony, a place of art, a place of academia, and much more besides. The Centre was created in the grounds of a former farmhouse, in the village of Laxton on the edge of Sherwood Forest in North Nottinghamshire. The surrounding countryside provides a peaceful setting and the Centre itself is set in two acres of beautiful landscaped gardens.

The Centre provides a range of facilities for people of all backgrounds and persuasions to explore the history and implications of the Holocaust. It houses a permanent exhibition on the Nazi period and offers space for reflection in the memorial rose gardens. The memorial gardens contain a number of different areas, including a beautiful rose garden that has become a place of pilgrimage in its own right. Over 800 visitors to the Centre, many of them survivors and their families, have planted roses in memory of the victims. For many, it is the only place where the names of their parents and siblings are permanently inscribed. If you look closely at the pictures above, you can read the dedication plaques next to the roses. The plaque underneath the pillar reads; "Beneath this pillar lies soil from each of the six death camps whose names are inscribed upon it. These six camps were built by people during the Nazi era specifically to murder their fellow human beings. In less than four years millions of men, women and children mainly Jews, perished in these places."

If I had room in my garden, I would plant Rosa Margaret Merril in memory of Lord Shawcross, Britain’s chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials of 1945-46. His advocacy is the stuff of legends. "In measured tones, the more effective for being entirely without histrionics or anger, he relentlessly built up the indictment against the accused of waging aggressive war in breach of treaty obligations. The very calmness of Shawcross’s exposition made it the more terrible. He let the appalling history of Nazi oppression unfold itself to the courtroom through a dispassionate relation of facts which told their own awful story."

The Nuremberg trials initiated a movement for the prompt establishment of a permanent international criminal court, eventually leading over fifty years later to the adoption of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Conclusions of the Nuremberg trials served to help draft:
The Genocide Convention, 1948.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.
The Convention on the Abolition of the Statute of Limitations on War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, 1968.
The Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War, 1949; its supplementary protocols, 1977, and in 1998, to The Human Rights Act.

Never be a perpetrator. Never be a victim. And never, but never, be a bystander. Yahuda Bauer

A Pair Of Standard Roses, In Beehive Terracotta Pots

Rosa Scepter'd Isle and a Rainy Saturday in July

Scepter'd Isle is one of my favourite roses, and I've planted it at the top of the steps leading from the top terrace to the rest of the kitchen garden, so that I see when I walk through the garden, and from the kitchen windows too. The flowers are a delicious shell pink, the sort of pink you want your lover's gift of drawers to be; shell pinks, oyster, ivory, palest pistachio; light and airy and gorgeous and wildly expensive and fabulous.I'm between scents at the moment, my favourite since its launch a few years ago is Coco Mademoiselle. I wear it all day, everyday. But increasingly I'm drawn to Soir de Lune especially since the salesgirl at House of Fraser gave me a little goodie bag with samples a month ago. I spray the perfume onto those gorgeous little fragrance cards, and tuck them in my underwear drawers; each time I open them, the scent wafts out to greet me. Oh how can I be so unfaithful to Coco Mademoiselle... all too easily, it seems.
This is how David Austin describes Scepter'd Isle: "This is a charming rose which bears numerous, cupped flowers, with yellow stamens visible within. The colour is a soft pink shading to a paler pink on the outer petals. Its growth is rather upright, with its flowers held above the foliage. It flowers freely and continuously. There is a powerful fragrance - an outstanding example of the English Rose fragrance, based on the myrrh note introduced with ‘Constance Spry’." And just look at the raindrop, captured at the base of this rose before it falls into my waiting hands. Roses, rainfall and joys in my heart.

Midsummer's Eve: Love Looks Not With The Eyes, But With The Mind

It's 23.35hrs on the day before the Longest Day, Midsummer. I'm just checking the Greenwich Mean Time website for the time for sunrise tomorrow. I shall sleep tonight with roses under my pillow, (actually Ispahan, Eglantyne and Sceptr'ed Isle), and set the alarm for dawn. Actually it's now 00.04hrs, on the Longest Day, as I've just received an interesting email and been reading it with growing awe. Some people are just very good at what they do, even if they are the subject of very rude jokes about double blind studies...

http://www.william-shakespeare.info/quotes-quotations-play-midsummer-nights-dream.htm

It's Still Raining

Rosa "Nathalie Nypals," a semi-double, rose-pink dwarf polyanthas, and some small oil jars on the steps between terraces. The first rose to bloom in my garden this year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWwyjmSbJPs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynYOHw23o6M

Louis MacNeice, Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

http://steveandbecky.smugmug.com/keyword/pink/1/51920168#51920168

Return of Winter, At Last

The forecasted cold nights and early morning frosts delivered the goods this weekend. Up early and out into the garden just after 7am. I left my boots near the radiator overnight, and they were toasty warm... heavenly! Tea in one hand, slice of toast and marmite in the other, I stood on the terrace assessing the work that really couldn't be put off any longer. And then I went back inside for another round of toast, boiled the kettle again, put the laundry on, got something out of the freezer, scraped the ice off the windscreen (there's a couple of garden tables occupying half the garage), walked down to fetch the papers, walked back and chatted to the dog walkers, dropped the papers onto the dining room table, made another cup of tea, read some uni course work (beloved firstborn is home for the weekend), then stood once more on the terrace and let the steam from my tea curl up my nose.

And finally, at 7.45am, I got moving! Finished clearing the pond, then finished pruning the shrub roses; finished winter pruning a couple of apple trees; hacked the irritating top growth from my espalier pear; cleared a little patch of garden where I grew annuals last year; lost my balance climbing between terraces on slippy wooden sleepers trying to smell the winter flowering honeysuckle; dug up a rather revolting patch of nettles (tough luck red admirals) that invaded my cold north facing border last summer; and finally, finally, I cut back and tied in the climbing Mme Alfred Carriere thats been "settling in" to my fernery for three years and didn't put on a stick of growth until last year.

So there you have it. A relaxed weekend in the early winter garden.