GARDENING
RIOT Cascading over walls, climbing through trees, tumbling down banks and filling the air with the most heavenly scent, the romantic ramblers at Moor Wood in Gloucestershire are at their peak for three glorious weeks in midsummer words by sue gilkes photographs by lynn keddie
The view of the garden from the house with beautiful Rosa ‘????? ????’ in the foreground
STYLE
Landscaped valley SEASON OF INTEREST
Midsummer (late june-early July) SIZE
Two acres SOIL TYPE
Cotswold brash
countryliving.co.uk
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f you happen to find yourself in Gloucestershire in midsummer and catch the evocative scent of roses on the breeze, the chances are you won’t be far from Moor Wood. Mentioned in the Domesday Book and hidden away in an ancient secluded valley between Cheltenham and Cirencester, this romantic garden is home to the National Collection of rambling roses. “It’s more of an evolved landscape, with the roses as a focus, rather than a garden in the conventional sense,” says Susie Robinson, who together with husband Henry has acquired more than 150 of these wonderfully wayward plants over the past 30 years. Originally found on mountainsides in China growing wild, rambling roses are notoriously rampant in the right conditions. “Luckily, our style is very relaxed, which is just as well as they’re not called ramblers for nothing and don’t take to being trained up walls like climbers,” Susie adds. Accordingly, the roses aren’t confined to any one area and have been planted all down the valley. Visitors are encouraged to wander freely and encounter them tumbling down banks, cascading over walls and climbing up through trees with a joie de vivre that reaches a spectacular crescendo for all too brief a period every summer. “We enjoy three glorious weeks when the air is filled with the fragrance of hundreds of roses in bloom – from around 21 June to 8 July – but as they are our only flowers, we then subside into greenness,” Susie explains. The result of many generations’ input rather than one person’s overriding vision, the garden has distinct overlays of different eras. Since taking over Moor Wood in the
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1980s on the death of Henry’s father, the couple have made it their mission to restore the valley to its pastoral idyll. While happy to have the elegant legacy of Georgian times, when many lovely trees were planted, they’ve largely done away with the horticultural foibles of the Victorians and Edwardians and clutter of the 20th century (burying overhead wires and removing rusty farm buildings) in order to achieve the harmonisation of all the various periods. The lawned area of garden by the house also needed attention, as it was dominated by an overlarge border. A particularly vigorous ‘Paul’s Himalayan Musk’, bearing a profusion of small, blush-pink, double flowers, spills down the bank behind it and would overwhelm everything in its path if left unchecked so, once a year, clad in thorn-proof clothing and industrial
gauntlets, Susie goes in to remove the dead wood in the middle from beneath. This involves much snipping, clipping and whirling about wielding secateurs and shears, to create an airiness that allows the new growth to take prominence. “I always do it in January as it easy to see the dead wood from the green then,” she explains. Henry prunes the ramblers on the walls of the rock garden and orchard, but has a different approach, cutting them back in August after they’ve bloomed. “There’s not much point dead-heading in the hope of a repeat performance as, on the whole, they only flower once each year,” he says. Here, in what was originally a Victorian walled garden, 12 beautiful apple trees –an 18th-century Gloucestershire variety called ‘Ashmead’s Kernel’ – are underplanted with wild flowers to ravishing effect. The tall countryliving.co.uk
OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT A view of the house with Rosa ‘Aristide Briand’; R. ‘Gardenia’; pink roses ‘Paul Transon’ and ‘Paul Noël’ THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Pink ‘Paul Noël’ with white ‘Rambling Rector’; old stone walls support an array of roses; R. ‘Erinnerung an Brod’; R. ‘Laure Davoust’; ‘Wickwar’ and ‘Sander’s White Rambler’; the fragrant ‘Rambling Rector’; R. ‘Paul Transon’
Ramblers have minds of their own and are happiest scrambling over things
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pale Cotswold-stone walls are lined with more biddable, pliable wichurana varieties and upright multifloras selected for their soft, ‘fruity’ shades – apricot-yellow ‘Buff Beauty’, the more compact, orangey-yellow ‘Ghislaine de Féligonde’, yellow ‘Easlea’s Golden Rambler’ and the fragrant, yellowy-cream ‘Aviateur Blériot’. When the Robinsons started acquiring roses in 1983 they knew nothing about growing them. “National Collections were just getting off the ground then,” Henry recalls. “The idea was to gather together all the known varieties of each species to safeguard their future. I offered to collect ramblers, as they seemed to fit with the wild and rather romantic effect Susie and I were hoping to create in the garden here.” They were given a list of roses required in order to establish the National Collection and found themselves writing to strangers, sending off for plants and travelling around the country to track down the more elusive ones. Local horticulturalist and nurseryman, Keith Steadman, gave them the Soulieana hybrid ‘Wickwar’, a chance cross from his garden, which is Susie’s favourite rambler. Very vigorous, it bears creamy-white flowers with yellow stamens offset by silvery grey foliage and thrives on the old rockery wall at the top of the slope above the orchard. This area is home to the brighter-coloured roses such as fragrant ‘Debutante’ with its sugar-pink flowers and ‘Tea Rambler’, which has scented, salmon-pink blooms, as well as white varieties including highly aromatic ‘The Garland’ and ‘Sander’s White Rambler’ with its cascading fragrant sprays. None of the roses are sprayed but they get the occasional barrow-load of manure in winter, which not only feeds them but also suppresses the disease spores from the
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previous year. Although Henry is in charge of cataloguing the ramblers, the majority of the hands-on gardening falls to Susie. Her work in architectural conservation keeps her very busy so she usually only has one day a week tending the roses, and even with regular help, it’s impossible to keep such a large area immaculately maintained. This has led to a shift away from it being a garden in the more manicured, conventional sense, which she and Henry positively enjoy. By allowing it to evolve organically, they’ve achieved their dream at Moor Wood of creating a garden that looks as though it has always been part of their beloved valley. Moor Wood, Woodmancote, Cirencester, Gloucestershire (01285 831692; moorwood.co.uk) is open on 29 June, 2-6pm, for the NGS and on ?? ???? for Cobalt. Groups by appointment: email susie@moorwoodhouse.co.uk.
GARDENING
SIX OF THE BEST for smaller spaces
OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Glorious ramblers in full bloom; R. ‘Paul Noël’; the apple trees are underplanted with wild flowers in the orchard; pink R. ‘Paul Transon’ with the pale R. ‘Aglaia’ THIS PAGE The delicate, fragrant blooms of R. ‘Francis E. Lester’
.‘Madame Alice Garnier’ Smaller rambler R with fragrant pinky-apricot double blooms. R. ‘Spectabilis’ Good smaller sempervirens rambler with small, double flowers in cream and lilac. R. ‘Goldfinch’ Lovely, compact and thornless with large clusters of scented, small semi-double golden and primroseyellow flowers that fade to buff apricot. R. ‘Princesse Louise’ Graceful, reliable sempervirens rambler that produces sprays of scented, cupped double flowers of creamy-blush that fade to white. R. ‘Open Arms’ Good miniature rambler with abundant small, semi-double, pale salmon-pink flowers during summer and into autumn. Light fragrance. R. ‘Albéric Barbier’ Very vigorous variety with large, double creamy-white blooms in early summer and possible repeat flowering later on.