May 30

Hello my friends, how are you? How is your garden? Here in central Pennsylvania, our roses have just begun to bloom and they’re a sight for weary eyes. I thought you might enjoy some photos from the past couple of weeks beginning with…

…Rosa spinosissima, which in our garden is always the first to flower. You would think that for such a delicate looking bloom the fragrance would be light but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The scent from this rose carries across the garden, honey-sweet and welcoming both to humans and bees!

We have several species roses in our woodland garden. Some are performing better than others. Realistically, I know I need to move some of them to our allotment garden–more on that in a moment.

We have a Mother’s Day tradition of taking me to a nursery to buy a David Austin rose and this time around it was “Vanessa Bell” / AUSeasel that came home with me. If you’re looking for a rose that has a lightness and delicacy to her, this is the one. However, Vanessa Bell is best left to the garden and not for cut flowers as the petals shatter quickly.

In addition to Vanessa, I also came home with ‘Fragrant Cloud’ / TANellis, a rose I had no business purchasing as apparently she is not hardy to my zone and gets blackspot easily. What was I thinking?! Well, I’ll tell you, even if I only get one season out of this rose, it’s already been worth it. The blooms are absolutely massive and live up to their name as the fragrance is superb. {ETA: I forgot that years ago, I included Fragrant Cloud in my post on Fragrant Roses if you fancy taking a look.}

Fragrant Cloud was immediately brought to our allotment garden which I’ll tell you more about now…

Some of you may recall that in addition to our home garden, which is about 3 years old now, we have a small plot in our local community garden. As our new home is on a very wooded plot, many of our roses were moved to our sunny, open allotment to be enjoyed mainly as cut flowers. The allotment has it’s own set of challenges, mainly exposure, but it’s been a great way for us to continue growing the roses we enjoy. Here’s a photo of ‘Sweet Fragrance’ being brought in for planting. ‘Sweet Fragrance’ is a Ping Lim rose; Do you remember this breeder sweeping the awards at Biltmore International Rose Trials in 2015?

Although we grow more than half of our roses at the allotment garden, our home does have quite a few growing in the front yard which gets the most sun. Here are a few which have just started to flower:

‘Carefree Beauty’ came with the house and in spite of the rabbits making a meal of it regularly, is still growing strong.

I planted a number of Old Garden Roses in the garden including R alba semi-plena. This rose is tolerant of the shady conditions of our front yard but bloomed so much better in the sunny spot we had her in our former garden. There are a handful of other OGR’s growing along with semi-plena that are just in bud and I hope to be sharing photos of them soon.

Admittedly, as soon as the roses start to flower, I can’t help but pick them to bring inside. I have several vases of these posies that I carry with me around the house and call my “emotional support roses.” ‘Munstead Wood’ was snipped and brought indoors as soon as it opened and once ‘Mme Isaac Pereire’ put out her first flower, I had to bring it home from the allotment so I could sit and gaze at it all day. Of course, I grew Mme Isaac’s sport, Madame Ernest Calvat for years and years so I figured it was time to grow the parent. So far, I like them both equally. They’re absolute stunners!

Speaking of stunners, I can’t get enough of the blooms on ‘Désirée Parmentier‘, which perfectly depicts the quartered bloom type in her old-fashioned flowers. Incidentally, she makes a nice cut flower, too.

Here’s another antique beauty which flowers mid May in our garden: Centifolia Variegata / Village Maid. Ours is still in a great big container alongside the chicken barn. We had every intention of planting her directly in the ground but she seems so happy how she is, so we’ve quite left her to her own devices. The flowering of this rose for me is very bittersweet because it was at this same time last year that our beloved hen, Nutmeg, passed away and I can’t help but associate the two events.

The same goes for ‘Colette’ who also flowers reliably this time of year. I took these photos just a few days ago and you can see that she is covered in buds ready to put on a spectacular show. We live on a street that many students and professors use to get to Penn State campus and I love having this pretty little vignette for them; I’ve already had some people stop to take photos!

So many more roses just about to open and I hope to share those photos with you soon. In the meantime, I hope you have a peaceful weekend.