Just. NOTES // Somebody else's roses
Rambling past 'somebody else's roses' on the way up to Wanstead Flats and shyly stopping to breathe in the sherbet scent, I ponder if a rose by any other name would smell as sweet?
Somebody else’s roses are out in bloom around the neighbourhood. Most exquisite is a sherbet-scented bough of peachy cream climber or rambler that weighs heavy over the almost end of Tylney Road. I find myself inadvertently crossing the road at this point, if I’m not already on that side, to amble under its arched branches and put nose to bloom to inhale the fragrance if I’m feeling bold. These are somebody else’s roses after all and sometimes I feel quite shy partaking in their beauty. Am I allowed? Is it strange that I’m smelling the roses as people and cars past by? I know it’s not, in fact it should be the law, but still there is a slight whiff of ownership that lingers with every over-hanging bloom. Look don’t touch.
This particular bough – an intertwined mix of two different varieties of peach and yellow rose on closer inspection – is also quite adept at grabbing onto your hair or clothes by way of their triangular thorns. I wonder how to identify the blooms. My plant finding app (currently Picture This) has them both down as ‘Evergreen Roses’ or Rosa sempervirens, a climbing perennial in the rose family with very prickly stems, a species that blooms in spring and summer and that is commonly grown in the shrublands and valleys of southern France – famous, according to the caption, as a species grown in the French gardens of King Louis Philippe I. I know this rose to be a single-flowered species, however, and ‘somebody else’s roses’ are as frothy and silken as a meringue.
I head over to David Austin – what better way to spend a Saturday morning – and stare in awe at climbers and ramblers galore. I head first to the yellows. Too wild for the perfectly circular-layered lemon syllabub flowers of ‘Claire Austin’; ‘Malvern Hills’ perhaps with its open double blooms and strong, slender stem growth. The peachy cream one may be ‘Félicié-Pérpetue’, pink-flushed buds opening to pom-pom petalled ivory white. Next time I pass I’ll be sure to look at the buds more closely. The flower-heads are similar to ‘Princess Louise’ but not as rosy. Overgrown ornamentals asserting a mixed heritage of species roses and cultivars.
I’m fully down a rose-tinted rabbit hole now and embark on a quest to find out how roses are bred. On Peter Beale’s site I find a guide to the creation of new cultivars, hybridisation achieved by brushing the pollen of one rose onto the stigma of a mother plant that has been stripped of its pollen-bearing anthers so natural pollination cannot take place. With male and female gametes combined a hip begins to grow, and within it seeds that will be harvested and then sown in January and February in greenhouses after a stint in a fridge to simulate winter conditions. New seedlings apparently grow quickly and are at miniature bush stage by April. The best ones are planted out in fields and assessed over several years with the best chosen for launch.
The launch of new roses often takes place at Chelsea Flower Show. This year, the stand out rose was David Austin’s ‘Dannahue’ named after the birth name of garden designer Danny Clarke aka The Black Gardener. Billed as being ideal for containers, shaded areas, grown against walls and fences, and for city spaces as well as cottage gardens, Dannahue seems an ideal rose to represent the inclusivity that must continue to be woven into horticulture and beyond, with £10,000 from the sales to be donated to Grow2Know, a not-for-profit founded by Tayshan Hayden-Smith and for which Danny is an ambassador, that works to reclaim London-based community outdoor spaces. Grow2Know also produced one of my favourite and thought-provoking gardens at Chelsea, a small but powerful punch of concrete block and wildflowers designed to highlight an ongoing gap in nature accessibility for all.
I tried not to linger over the zesty-lychée scent emanating from each bowl of Dannahue’s deep apricot petals but scented roses have a habit of asking you to come even closer, to fill your nostrils, nay lungs with the fragrance, and send you slightly doolally with olfactory sensation. The in and out walkway at David Austin’s ever-popular stand soon sent me on my way, however. Everyone must have their turn at smelling the roses.
I’m not ready to buy any new roses at the moment as need to think about placement and structure but I did manage to bring a couple of specimens with me from the additional part of my garden. A young ‘Generous Gardener’ that I installed by my next door neighbour’s fence to echo the one I was training over my writing shed – one to deliver old rose, musk and myrrh scent through the windows and stable door and provide a breathing station at which to wonder at the multiple pollinator-friendly stamens within each delicate pale pink flower, the other to stare at from a distance and admire its fluid branches, slightly wild manner, and touches of ballerina.
I also brought my prized Apothecary’s Rose, Rosa gallica ‘Officinalis’ that I hunted down over lockdown to form part of my heritage herb garden. Its deep crimson buds and petals are rich in deeply fragrant rose essential oil that makes it ideal for herbal remedies and recipes. I peer at it from my new kitchen window and lament its temporary placement in a small pot that surely doesn’t have enough nutrition to allow it to bloom. I must plant both roses somewhere more appropriate this weekend.
The roses I left behind were the ones that I inherited when I moved into my Claremont Road abode in 2008 – a deep red-black velvety number that exists somewhere behind my writing studio, a candy pink number that looks on its last legs stem and leaf wise but keeps blooming anyway, and a ‘Champagne Moments’ given to us as a wedding present from my friend Lucy. I thought the latter would be hard to leave, its petals being the most elegant shade of buttercream meets whispering tangerine. But as with most other plants and artefacts that specifically relate to marriage it was actually good to say farewell and let it assume a new meaning for the new occupants. In the end divorce is all about letting go. I also left a juvenile dog rose (Rosa canina) and Rosa alba, also planted as part of my burgeoning rose garden, in the knowledge that I don’t have enough space for them here. I could take them to the school garden but we planted a few wild roses there already and Rosa alba is notoriously prickly.
I ponder on the meaning of it all. My roses are now somebody else’s roses and somebody else’s roses are somehow mine. The bloom and the prickle, feasts for bees and hover-flies, infinite allure. Somebody else’s roses may be this cultivar or that, and in many cases I may never know despite ongoing attempts to identify them, which is really just another a way to get closer to nature. And as the great Bard said by way of Juliet, ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’
Happy Saturday all – hoping you also smell the roses today, somebody else’s or your own. If you’re interested in setting up a daily writing practice find more Just. NOTES – my regular, often daily nature, gardening, and general self-expression journal – at abotanicalworld.substack.com and write along with me, online or in a book. It’s good for writing discipline but also for the soul. Couldn’t help but share this one as a little extra drop to your inboxes this month, for who doesn’t love a rose.
Sonya X