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Antique Roses
melissaaipapa

The most beautiful roses in the world

Melissa Northern Italy zone 8
7 years ago

So I was down in the bottom of the garden yesterday doing maintenance. There was that tall grass that has flopped down on top of the roses to shear, and, on the downhill side of the bottom bed at the property boundary, invading artemisia, wild plum, nettles, and the odious sticky Galium aperine to fight back. DH has been busy mowing the paths, and we have handsome walks, rich in weeds, clover, and grass, to walk between the beds of roses and shrubs and the four-five feet tall annual grass. The garden hasn't reached maturity, it doesn't yet have the massive shrubs and certainly not the trees it needs for that, but the grass certainly has gotten good, and that's the first step, the fertility that will power the garden as it grows.

The bottom bed was planted back in 2007-08 with mainly once-blooming old roses, many of them on dog rose rootstock. They're mature roses now, full of vigor. From a practical point of view, we were smarter than we knew when we planted them along the bottom edge of the property. We didn't know it then, but all that land is dropping, the steep ground growing steadily steeper. Below the garden, our neighbors' land is woods and brush. There are a lot of elms, and with their shallow roots elms are thoroughly useless for holding ground, as are the invading thickets of wild plum and brambles. But our old roses dig themselves in. The double line of Damasks, Gallicas, and so on, have dropped vertically, perhaps three or four feet; the bed is steeply sloped now, and so is the walk above it. But the land immediately below the roses has dropped vertically another six feet or so. The roses have held nobly, keeping the land in place.

I had a task down there I needed to do in this period. The roses have suckered, wandering through the bed, and I need to see them when they're in bloom to know what variety the suckers are, and pull the ones that are crowding the less vigorous varieties. I waded and crept among the roses, cutting grass, yanking the more obnoxious weeds, and flagging rose suckers for eventual removal, since I decided I wanted to see their flowering first. As I worked I came nose to nose with the most beautiful roses in the world, growing in their natural habitat of meadow. So delicate, so opulent, so noble: 'Blanchefleur', 'Pink Leda', 'La Ville de Bruxelles', 'Gloire des Mousseux' (which I suspect is actually 'Mme. Louis Leveque'), 'Violacea', 'Ypsilante'. And so on. Need I say that they're all wonderfully fragrant?

These roses are largely of European origin, and so it's not surprising that many gardeners in the U.S. have difficulties growing certain of them (Damask crud, chill requirements). They're perfectly adapted here, and are among the toughest shrubs a gardener can grow. I love everything about them, not only the flowers, but the buds, the foliage, the growth. I don't mind their being once-flowering. There are the Teas, equally lovely in a different fashion, that come before and then flower again marvelously in fall. There are all the other flowering plants that precede and follow them: spring flowering bulbs, violets, tree peonies, lilacs. There's always plenty to see and smell and touch. So I look forward to the once-blooming old roses, and when they flower I go and live among them: such a miracle. In nature the ancestors of these roses are many of them colonizing plants that grow in abandoned pastures, so our wildish meadow type of garden suits them both ecologically and aesthetically. Even though I need to remove some of the suckers--'Pink Leda' is particularly wide-spreading and vigorous--I'm glad for this habit, as it will help anchor the ground even better, and the beautiful suckering growth will compete with the unlovely brush spreading over from the neighboring land.

Melissa

Featured Answer
  • Melissa Northern Italy zone 8
    Original Author
    7 years ago

    Thank you all very kindly for the words of praise! They're appreciated. Paula, don't worry about the land dropping; I don't. It's not that it's not worrisome, but for ONCE I'm acting wisely by doing what I can, and then not thinking any more about it. Actually all our amending and planting so far seems to have been working: our steep hillside, with our house perched at the top, is staying in place, even with all the rains of recent years.

    No pictures are on the way, alas. What I need is an enthusiastic gardener and photographer to come pay a visit in rose season. Forumers, consider this an invitation--we have room--though I'm a somewhat awkward, if willing, hostess. You don't need to take pictures. My sister would come regularly if she could, but she has a job, and plane tickets are expensive.

    Virginia, I enjoy writing the kind of brief essay of which my initial post here is an example. I don't know, right now, how to write a book, a good one. But your comment has started me thinking.

    True_blue, I think I've looked into vetiver in the past, but, this impression confirmed by another check just now, it's too tender for our zone. It is employed further south for soil stabilization and erosion control, which Lord knows Italy can use.

    Lavender_lass, we grow all those same plants and what you describe is similar to our year, dry summers and succession of bloom, though with our much milder climate we also enjoy more tender plants and a longer growing season. I think the summer humidity of much of the U.S. is a problem for many of the old roses of European origin. We have little trouble with black spot or Damask crud here; rust is quite rare. Many roses do mildew, but it's mainly an aesthetic problem.

    Anna-Lyssa, we've had terrible weather too, in fact this morning we had a fire in the wood stove again. I'm hoping the weather will finally turn warm now, though I'm happy for yesterday's inch or so of rain. It was so dry during the usual rainy season that I'm afraid that groundwater levels are still low. And these late rains have been nicely spaced out, I must say.

    I think your idea of "untaming" your slope is exciting. What occurs to me to keep in mind if you decide to do so is this: generally you want the wild herbaceous plants to be annuals. Annual grasses, euphorbias, wild peas and vetches, poppies, veronica, geraniums perhaps, are all good. (By the way, poppies grow in disturbed soil.) Some perennials are also good, small non-invasive plants like English daisies, and I like chicory with its clouds of blue flowers in summer, though it can grow quite thick, especially in very heavy soil. Native bulbs are pleasant: ornithogalum, muscari, wild gladiolus. All these are fine in a meadow. You want to keep most perennial grasses out, Bermuda grass and others, and such obnoxious colonizers as wild clematis (C. vitalba), wild plum (Prunus spinosa), and nettles, and I prefer to keep the dock population down, too. If you have mostly meadow with just a few roses well spaced out, you could just mow it occasionally, timing the mowings to allow the plants to go to seed.

    Actually the possibilities are vast. If you want an example of the range of plant life that can grow in an area that's maintained by simple mowing, just look at a country roadside. Feral tall bearded irises bloom and then get mowed down in early summer; and this might also work for native officinalis peonies, and would be fine for Saponaria officinalis, field sage (Salvia pratensis), ox-eye daisies, the many pretty Galiums (not the obnoxious G. aperine I mentioned above, but most Galiums are attractive); also native orchids. I would allow clover in a meadow as well. All these plants I've named are native in my area, and most of them probably in yours as well. If you just cut the grass, leave it lie, and keep invasive perennials and woody plants from taking hold, my guess is that many of them will arrive on their own; others you could add by going out on plant digging excursions.

    Thanks, Marlorena, I'll take a look at that article. The possibility of confusion has been raised before: I believe David Austin talks of it in one of his books, and it also comes up in 'The Vintage Gardens Book of Roses'.



    Comments (19)

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