A Rose a Day No.31
This beautiful rose is called ‘Gertrude Jekyll’. It’s an example of a relatively new family of roses called ‘English Roses’. I have one specimen growing in my garden in France - but this is a photo from the internet.
As their creator David Austin writes:
An English Rose is, or should be, a Shrub Rose. According to variety, it may be considerably larger or even smaller than a Hybrid Tea. But whether large or small, the aim is that it should have a natural, shrubby growth. The flowers themselves are in the various forms of the Old Roses: deep or shallow cup shapes; rosette shapes; semi-double or single, or in any of the unlimited variations between these. They nearly always have a strong fragrance, no less than that of the Old Roses, and their colours often tend towards pastel shades, although there are deep pinks, crimsons, purples and rich yellows.. The aim has been to develop in them a delicacy of appearance that is too often lacking in so many of the roses of our time; to catch something of that unique charm which we associate with Old Roses. Furthermore, English Roses nearly all repeat flower well under suitable conditions.
The breakthrough was a rose called ‘Constance Spry’, released in 1961. As the nursery’s website puts it: ‘The original English Rose. Large, glowing pure rose pink, deeply cupped blooms. Strong myrrh fragrance. Summer flowering only.’ Since 1961, Austin and his team(Austin died in 2018)have produced over 200 ‘English Roses’, and revolutionized how we think about the roses of the present today.
Since the 1980s, there has been a growing trend amongst rose-lovers for ‘new’ roses which still possess some of the endearing characteristics of the old ‘vintage’ garden varieties. The breeders who nurtured and responded to this demand were effectively creating thoroughly historicized roses, and were aware of the rich cultural resonances the rose possesses. They created roses to appeal to people who no longer identified ‘contemporality’ with the rejection of the past. In fact, the new hybrids might be called ‘postmodern’ roses, as they are an indication of a much wider cultural swerve away from an uncompromising cult of the new toward more nuanced relationships with the past. For, in the rush to make the rose the modern rose, the rose of today, much got lost along the way. The aim of the ‘postmodernists’ was to use contemporary scientific knowledge to breed a new race of roses that could unite the best of the old with the best of the new. Like all the various breeders who specialize in producing the ‘heritage’ style roses, Austin make a point of naming their new roses according to the old manner, with great discretion and very good taste , such as these from David Austin: ‘Emily Brontë’, ‘Lady of Shallot’, ‘The Lark Ascending’, and this one, Gertrude Jekyll.
I mentioned the great Edwardian gardener Gertrude Jekyll in my last post. In her book Roses for English Gardens (1902) she opined: ‘Roses are so comparatively modest, they are so accommodating and so little fastidious, that with very moderate preparation and encouragement they can be made to succeed.’
One of the most impressive commercial rose nursery anywhere must be David Austin Roses Ltd. near Wolverhampton in the English Midlands. There is not only a plant centre, tea-room and gift shop, but also six linked rose gardens, with over 700 different varieties or roses. The free sprawling growth of the roses is contained by carefully maintained hedge borders. Each garden has a specific theme, from a formal ‘Victorian Walled Garden’ to an informal ‘Species Garden’. Austin’s own ‘English’ roses are displayed in the “Renaissance Garden.’ David Austin Roses Ltd. provides, one could say, the ‘total’ rose experience. Austin, and the others who have followed his lead, have recognized that the ‘modern’ is only better than the ‘ancient’ if it is proven to be so in recognizable ways.