This page will carry a selection of society member`s favourite roses .

MORE  CLIMBERS  AT  48

My garden at 48 is divided into three sections.  I wrote about the climbers adjacent to the rear of the cottage area in a 2008 Newsletter.

I do have a large extension through the flat arch leading to more exhibition beds and the greenhouses work area.  This part of the garden is divided up with posts and trellis panels and also contains mixed perennial beds and a large bed of Phlox and Penstemons.  There are some thirty five climbers growing on these arches and the far boundary wall.  Many of the climbers are intertwined with Clematis. 

Over the flat arch with its double garden gates are growing Maid of Kent and Dorothy Perkins intertwined with winter flowering clematis Cirrahosa “Freckles”.  Maid of Kent however is not readily available now.  I planted a bush at each pillar of the arch on the recom-mendation of Keith Jones.  It has light pink flowers growing in clusters of six to ten blooms with slight perfume.  The flowering once it starts is continuous, beginning to flower early in July.  I have used it in miniature rose classes for clusters, the foliage being quite small and the individual bloom approximately 11/4inches (30mm).

The plant nearest to the Hawthorn hedge did not at first grow too well, so to the rear of the trellis supporting the flat arch I planted Dorothy Perkins.  The plant of Dorothy is an own root cutting.  The cutting rooted from some stems left behind at Shugborough show by Alison Symons has now established well and has bloomed profusely for the last two years.  The flowers as I am sure you know, are deep pink and fully double.  The foliage can be susceptible to mildew particularly if grown on a wall, but in the open situation on the arch the mildew has been only slight.  My plant is growing vigorously despite the poor conditions near the Hawthorn and has as I write, produced three more basal shoots.  Cuttings from this variety root readily in late summer.

Through the gates are three exhibition rose beds. The beds have lawn paths between them.  This area is surrounded with two metre high posts with arch trellis panels on which to grow climbing roses and clematis.  At each post grows a climbing rose.

First, adjacent to the gates, is Summer Wine a great favourite of mine.  The coral pink flowers open wide with prominent red stamens and are very fragrant.  It is very healthy, raised by Kordes in 1984 and it has stood the test of time.  Growing through it is a large flowered clematis General Sikorsky with its bright blue flowers, it makes quite a spectacle in mid summer as they both flower together. 

Along side it grows Highfield with its pale yellow flowers.  It is a sport of Compassion.  I find it not so vigorous as its parent and like Compassion can succumb to black spot later in the season.  Unlike Compassion I find very little fragrance.  William Kennett is the large flowered clematis growing through Highfield and has lilac colour blooms which are set off with the pale lemon of the rose.  Madame Gregoire Staechelin was the next rose on this trellis.  However, because of her once flowering habit and for several years having rose rust I have now removed this one.  With pink flowers and good fragrance I was reluctant to replace her, but two years ago after changing the soil I replanted with Crème de la Crème.  The lovely large flowered deep cream blooms come in abundance and repeat quickly.  The rose produces plenty of healthy shiny green foliage and is certainly Gandy’s best climber.  Raised in 1998 I think it will be a winner with me. 

The final post before the return leg is home to Morning Jewel, raised in 1968 she is a healthy quick repeat climber growing to about three metres (10 ft) in my garden.  The flowers are deep pink almost luminous at times and they have a good fragrance.  It is recommended for shady areas where the blooms are even brighter, however for me it grows in full sun.

The return leg of the trellis is home to four medium pink climbers. Devon Maid raised by Chris Warner in 1982 grows to about three metres (10ft).  Its flowers are quite large and it always sets orange seed pods in the autumn.  Like all Chris Warner’s roses it is very healthy, makes lots of new growth with glossy green foliage and needs plenty of tying in to support it.

The second pink rose is Galway Bay, once again an older climber from McGredy this time raised in 1966 it performs very well.  The flowers are not full and have little fragrance it is quite healthy, but of the four it is least vigorous, growing only to about 2.4 metres (8ft) on my trellis. 

The most vigorous of these four on my trellis is Leaping Salmon raised in 1983.  It has made at least 4 metres (12ft) of growth by tying the strong laterals down, creating lots of short growth shoots with lots of flowers.  They are quite large, open very quickly and have a moderate fragrance.  It also sets orange seed pods in the autumn.

The final variety on this leg is Lavinia, a Tantau rose raised in 1980.  It produces many HT type blooms in large clusters but I find only has slight fragrance.  It is very vigorous but only grows approximately 2.4metres high (7 to 8 ft) and has a very shrubby habit.  Unfortunately it is prone to blackspot every late summer but I find it worthwhile for the sheer volume of flowers it produces.

These four pink climbers overshadow the miniature rose bed adjacent to them.  On the first flush of bloom between them they produce a 6 metre (20ft) wall of pink.

There is only one clematis that grows between them.  Pope John Paul II has creamy white flowers with a pink bar.  It produces a mass of these flowers and adds to the confection of pink produced by the roses in high summer. 

I will write about the final section of my garden with about a further twenty climbers next time.

                                                                                    John Anthony

JOHN WINDSOR'S TEN ROSES OF MERIT

John has been growing roses for several years on his allotments and in his greenhouse. These are his ten Roses of Merit.

ZEPHIRINE DROUHIN

A Bourbon Climber is an all time favourite.
Fragrant, pink semi-double blooms fill the area with scent on a warm evening. Unfortunately it is prone to disease and needs regular spraying, but well repays the effort. The fact that this rose  was introduced more than a hundred years ago and still is very  popular proves it.

WARM WELCOME,
A climbing miniature bred by our friend Chris  Warner. This rose works very well as a Pillar Rose beside my  door. It is clothed from top to bottom in orange vermillion flowers which give a warm glow and a welcome to our visitors.

One of my roses which gets the most comments is grown as a pillar on my allotment. It is a lesser known  climber named ROSARIUM UETERSEN,
a second generation  Kordesii Hybrid. I grow this around a 6ft high 18 inch wire mesh tube. The canes are wound around almost horizontal which causes the buds to produce side shoots with large clusters of fragrant pink 100 petal blooms.

Small but with perfectly formed blooms, one of Dee Bennetts miniatures,
IRRESISTIBLE is one of the best show roses of its type. It has white H.T. form blooms on a healthy bush

Up in size to David Austin's Classic Yellow, new English rose, GRAHAM THOMAS. This rose is so popular that thousands of bushes must have been sold.

ELINA,A light yellow H.T. from Dicksons.
This rose started  life as Peadouce, a brand of baby wear nicknamed in the trade as "Pea juice".
It has very full flowers and can be used as  a banker in the Three Stage Bloom Class or to really fill a  Bowl.

Back to Old Fashioned Roses. Although not that old, 1921 in fact, the H.P. FERDINAND PICHARD, a striped bloom scarlet streaked pink.

I  grow this on the pegged down system where the canes are bent over and the tips are then tied to pegs in the ground. This produces blooms all along the cane and is a very pretty sight

Len Scrivens, another good friend of ours, bred the  rose PRETTY LADY which is a very healthy bush with  large semi-double light pink blooms. The second flush of bloom last year in mid September was even better than the first. The bushes were totally covered in flowers and looked magnificent.

FRANCIS E LESTER
A climber, is  trained along my garden fence. From planting it takes three or  four years to really get going, but then throws out long strong canes which have been trained horizontally on wires. This again makes the buds produce side shoots with large  trusses of small blush white blooms, followed by small hips which stay on the canes all winter.

GLOWING  AMBER
A H.T. form miniature from Canada wins a lot of prizes at shows.

It has scarlet and yellow flowers, somewhat large at times, and is bred from June Laver. A point though, I would have thought the name Glowing Ember would have been more descriptive of this rose

                                                           GROWING  "ADMIRAL RODNEY"
                                                                          By Brian Schofield
 

Without  doubt one of the most outstanding exhibition roses over the past two decades has been the very beautiful hybrid tea ‘Admiral Rodney’. Where its name originated from I do not know, its parentage is unknown also, but it was introduced in  1973, here in the UK, bred by someone named Trew. The rose is described as having bushy growth, but not too robust, of medium height with glossy dark green foliage. The fragrant  blooms of classical shape are a rosy pink in colour with a deeper reverse, a subtle bi-colour in fact. Scent is described as moderate, but personally I find it extremely fragrant, almost on par with ‘Fragrant Cloud’.

It was sent to St Albans for trials, but unfortunately did not manage to complete the three year period necessary there and apparently was rejected. Subsequently, its potential was realised by some astute exhibitors and within a short time had made an immediate impact on the show scene. It then quickly established itself as one of the major varieties suitable for  showing in both classes for large specimen blooms in either box or vase, as well as with the other lovely varieties used primarily in bowls and vases.

The  classical high centred bloom does have immaculate form. Form  being defined in the RNRS Show Standards for an individual Large Flowered bloom such as ‘Admiral Rodney’, as :- the bloom should be half to three-quarters open with the petals symmetrically arranged within a circular outline. The outer  petals surrounding an upright and well-formed conical centre.  Such is its form that very little dressing, if any, is  necessary to obtain this, apart from the odd cottonwool pellet strategically placed, now and again, to acquire the circular outline. Size, which should be of average for a well grown plant, is fairly easily obtained also and Substance referring  to the petals, which should be firm, smooth and of good texture, neither coarse nor flimsy, comes quite naturally too. So, including for freshness, brilliance and purity of colour, in the decorative classes the points awarded per receptacle, against these standards, is 10 points in total and 5 points per bloom in the specimen bloom classes.

Therefore, ‘Admiral  Rodney’ could best be described as a ‘banker’, when well  grown, as it is very conducive to producing top quality  blooms, which are easily capable of obtaining these standards.

Over the past few years I have been privileged to win four premier show awards at National Level, two Star of the Show Medals, both with blooms of ‘Admiral Rodney’ and two Bloom of Merit Rosettes for ‘runners-up’, one with ‘Admiral Rodney’ and the other with ‘Keepsake’. For me ‘Admiral Rodney’ has performed extremely well over this period of time and has now proved  itself a very reliable ‘grower’, brought about, I believe, through the initial early training of the bushes.

I originally obtained  the variety quite some while ago now. At first, good flowers were produced but not in any real quantity. Hard pruning , for exhibition purposes, seemed to be resented by the plants and overall they appeared very reluctant to produce the good  strong basal growth favoured by the exhibitor, instead forming thinner spindly growth and smaller flowers. Additionally a lot of die-back was experienced, especially on the stems pruned in the Spring of the year, until finally the bushes, in some  cases, died or were considerably less productive and eventually dug out. They were replaced though, simply because I felt it was a variety I had to grow.

The  next batch of ‘Admiral Rodney’ I budded myself, in situ, as a block of twenty-four, which were duly headed back the following year resulting in quite good maiden growth on most of them, but not all. Some still wanted to make the thinner growth I had experienced with the previous bushes, which they did, but this time they were not allowed to flower on it. The buds were removed at a very early stage of development, so subsequently some stems were not allowed to flower at all, they were simply stopped. Apart from this the bush was allowed to go its own way, but any flowers produced were restricted to only reasonably good stems.
 

The  following Spring, the first year proper as far as pruning went, any thin or twiggy stems were removed completely together with most of the lateral growth, the remaining stems, now mostly upright, were only lightly pruned back to a height of between 40/50cm and then as in the previous year any subsequent thin or substandard growths were not allowed to flower, no matter how hard they tried. The stems and foliage again being allowed to remain on the bush to help channel the energy into the remaining flowering areas and to help produce new basal growth.

The  next year, ie for second year pruning, the pattern was  beginning to evolve, all sub-standard growth (thin and twiggy etc) was cut out, the new basal growth from the previous year was again only lightly pruned to around 40/50cm high, but the  new growth on the previous year’s lightly pruned stems was now  hard pruned back to about two buds.

Working  to this pattern over the years, through a balanced mix of light and hard pruning linked with disbudding, the bushes can build up to near shrub proportions and become quite capable of  readily producing the large specimen blooms seen in the RNRS National Shows.
 
Old  and diseased wood will still have to be removed and the bushes  even now, some ten years on, try to produce flowers on thin spindly growth, but in the main the bushes become much more robust ‘growers’. In fact this year I have had second flush blooms flowering at 1.5m height.

‘Admiral Rodney’ need not necessarily be solely an exhibitor’s rose, for with this sort of training, it could even now, make a very good garden rose and having such a beautiful highly fragrant  bloom makes it the perfect cut flower for a single vase in the house.

However, from an exhibitor’s point of view, once well and truly established it is a very satisfying and rewarding rose.

Brian  Schofield