STYLE | Advertisement Feature
GET READY FOR THE
ROSES There is no flower that epitomises the English garden more than the rose, and now is the time to get your roses into your gardens, for a stunning summer show.
R
oses can be stand-alone shrubs, low bushes for ground cover, tall standard roses, grouped together to form rose hedges, or climbers and ramblers that will scale houses or decorate obelisks, archways and other garden furniture. There’s literally a rose for every garden, and every function. Roses have been around forever – fossil evidence suggests at least 35 million years. Today there are over 30,000 varieties of roses worldwide and every year new roses are bred and named, often to celebrate anniversaries and significant events. David Austin is one of the best, most well established and prestigious breeders of roses in the UK and they are now stocked at Busy Bee, just outside Ryde. The crème de la crème of roses, winning many awards, David Austin Roses has been breeding exquisite English Roses for almost 60
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years and they are renowned for their beautiful, often many petalled, repeat flowering blooms and enticing, rich fragrances.
of lemon, which becomes sweeter and stronger with age. It forms a bushy, nicely rounded shrub with arching branches and rather shiny foliage.
Roses from David Austin that are currently in stock at Busy Bee include The Pilgrim, The Poet’s Wife, Silas Marner, Gentle Hermione and Boscobel.
Silas Marner is a shrub rose of soft mid pink, the petals are pale on the reverse and fade at the edges creating a gentle quality. Held on red stems, the mediumsized cupped blooms have relaxed, almost ruffled petals which are set around an attractive button eye, with a medium-strong Old Rose fragrance with accents of fruity lemon, green banana and apricot. A very healthy medium-sized shrub with glossy dark green foliage and wide, arching growth.
The Pilgrim is a particularly beautiful soft yellow climbing rose, with petals that pale prettily towards the edges. The buds open to reveal many petalled cups, which gradually form large, flat rosettes and have a medium strength fragrance, which is a perfect balance of tea and myrrh. It will quickly reach some height and still produce flowers and leaves lower down the plant. The Poet’s Wife is a shrub rose that bears rich yellow flowers, which pale over time, and have a neat outer ring of petals enclosing an informal group of petals within. There is a strong, wonderfully rich fragrance with a hint
Gentle Hermione has perfectly formed, shallow cups of pure light pink, paling to soft blush on the outer petals. This shrub rose has a strong, warm myrrh fragrance, and forms an attractive, quite broad shrub, with slightly arching stems. The leaves are tinged red at first, later turning green.
