A Rose a Day No.21
This is a view of Mottisfont Abbey in Hampshire.
The garden is is an excellent example of a formally laid out rose-garden that manages not to seem excessively formalized. The garden dates from the early 1970s when the great advocate of old-style roses, Graham Stuart Thomas, was invited to use part of the land around the abbey to create a garden dedicated to old roses – those bred before 1900. Thomas’ The Old Shrub Roses, published in 1955, launched a post-war rose sub-culture dedicated to the ‘classic’ or garden roses, that is, to roses that existed before the first Hybrid Teas. In his book Thomas wrote with characteristic good sense but undaunting conviction: ‘We all desire as much beauty, colour, fragrance, longevity, and annual goodwill as possible from our plants, and it is the purpose of this book to try to shew how a great group of neglected roses can add to the list of shrubs available for general garden use.’ He would go on to write profusely on the merits of the ‘old shrub roses’, and to put words into action by designing and planting gardens of old roses, such as Mottisfont Abbey.
Mottisfont Abbey is a living memorial to the old European shrub roses, and is helping to ensure their continued survival. I described the garden is ‘formal’, because it is arranged around straight paths and lawns, and has box edging the beds of roses which are usually planted together in the same classes. But as the head gardener Jonny Norton (who took the photographs here) explained to me: ‘Actually the lawn shapes are convex due to the irregular outer walls of the garden. A view from Google earth will confirm this. The impression on the ground, as you say, impresses formality.’ So, the garden certainly doesn’t seem like other formal rose-gardens. One area radiates at an angle from a fountain at the centre of a circular pond. The garden is also walled with red brick, which gives it the air of a secluded ‘secret garden’.
Many of the roses I have discussed are there at Mottisfont: Gallicas, Damasks, Moss Roses, Bourbons, Noisettes, Chinas, Teas, Hybrid Perpetuals. So the rose-garden is also an organic history lesson, revealing – at least in June, because these are almost all once blooming roses – the subtle beauty of the old style rose. The rest of time, however, one can enjoy the perennials, the companion plantings, which extend the pleasure beyond the roses’ time. As Norton says: ‘The uniqueness of this rose garden is indeed the companion garden that enhances the romance of the roses yet allows their dominance.…..But the celebration of the garden is the rose. The rose dominates from early spring through to autumn. During the month of June, for about a week when almost all are in bloom, the rose garden at Mottisfont is absolutely a garden of Paradise.’
Here are some more pictures by Jonny Norton:
