Starting a Rose Garden
I began planting a rose garden when I discovered I was able to source named varieties. A lot of the plants available in local nurseries are usually without labels so its hard to know how to even plan a garden without knowing their identities and potential characteristics. I eventually found some specialist rose nurseries that had them clearly identified.
Like many, I always associated roses with cool temperate climates, but have learnt over the years that they have in fact a complex history with strong roots in Asia, with its earliest known cultivation in China 5000 years ago. Roses whose provenance includes Chinese or West Asian/Middle eastern heritage I’ve also discovered, are more likely to thrive in our tropical heat.
It’s been an expensive experiment having ordered many varieties, learning along the way how they behaved, oten they behaving quite differently from describtions in the breeder’s literature. Thus began the mildy obsessive research on online resources, forum posts of people growing roses in tropical areas of the US and the mixed first hand experience sometimes of failure but also sometimes glorious success.
Asian Roses
CHINESE ROSES
Chinese Roses: Rosa Rugosa | Rosa Chinensis: Old Blush |Rosa Mutabilis
The well known Beach Rose- Rose Rugosa is in fact an East Asian variety found in Japan and China and introduced to the West in the 1800s as an ornamental plant and for coastal erosion control. It thrived in harsh conditions, leading to its wide spread naturalisation in many parts of Europe and North America.
China roses Hybridisation with Chinese Roses is what transformed European roses and made them repeat blooming increasing their popularity.
INDIAN ROSES
The ancient Indian text, the Rigveda, mentions the use of roses in religious ceremonies and for medicinal purposes. The ancient Indian epic, Ramayana, also mentioned the use of roses to decorate the palaces of kings and queens.1
Whilst India is well known for growing roses, particularly for making rose water and garlands for worship, the only native tropical wild species is Rosa clinophylla. It is found in India in places ranging from north-eastern states like Manipur , Assam; Bihar Orissa Andhra Pradesh and Orissa to Karnataka in south India. Rosa Clinophylla has been a key rose in the the work of rose breeders Viru and Girija Viraraghavan.
WEST ASIAN ROSES
Gallica roses come from Turkey and the Caucus, and the Damask rose comes from Syria. It is this damask rose that is the source of rose attar that has been widely used for centuries in perfumes. Historically, Romans imported roses from the desert climes of Egypt, nowadays most of these roses are commercially grown in hot climates from the Middle east through to India, Bangladesh, Thailand and Vietnam.
SOUTH EAST ASIAN ROSES
Whilst ther are no native roses in South East Asia there is evidence of a rose garden “Teijsmann Garden” section at Bogor Gardens, built in 1884 by Melchior Treub, described as “a small garden with French rose garden layout”.
ASIAN ROSE TRAITS
Asian roses brought two important traits into European breeding schemes -
repeat flowering from Chinese roses
strong fragrance particularly from Syrian Damask roses which is the standard type grown for making roe water and essential oils.
A rose is a rose is a rose
‘A rose is a rose is a rose’…. ‘by any other name would smell as sweet’ .
These oft quoted phrases penned by Gertrude Stein and Shakespeare respectively speak of the universality of the rose’s essential identity and universal, recognisable appeal.
But as I continued to acquire more plants for my rose garden I noticed the diversity in names for roses with names alluding to all manner of themes: theatrical, romantic, historical places or characters like Hyde Hall, William Morris, Falstaff, Othello with a heavy lean towards French ones Florence DeLattre, Jacques Cartier with Japanese rose breeders in particular leaning into French names like Moulin de Galette, Mon Couer
Sometimes they would provide clues to their breeders origin like Calcutta 300 from India or Queen Sirikit from Thailand. Sometimes not, like Summer Fireworks from China. Three rose names in particular, tell some fascinating stories of genetics, identity, origin and hybridisation.
MAGGIE
Maggie is a fragrant burgundy-red rose found by William Welch in Louisiana, USA in 1980.
This early Eurasian hybrid, combining Asian (China rose) and West-Asian/European (Damask, Bourbon) bloodlines. has been involved in a number of mysteries. Even the name is a puzzle. this is a rose for the world, adapted to more climates than perhaps any other old rose. Probable parentage: Rosa bourboniana ( Bourbon Rose Edouard lineage = R. chinensis × R. damascena ) × Another China-type or Hybrid Perpetual rose.
But thats not the only name or origin story of this mysterious rose - here are her other identities/names:
Mme. Eugenie Marlitt: The rose was dedicated by Geschwind to the author Eugenie John (1825-1887) who used “Eugenie Marlitt” as her pen name.
Pacific a found rose from the Bermudas brought there by the captain of a French ship
Kakinanda Red a rose grown throughout India“
Julius Fabianics de Misefa at Sangerhausen
Zi Yan Fei Wu a found rose from Taiwan and Japan
Research continues to determine if all the above are as supected, the same rose. DNA analysis so far has confirmed samples of “Kakinada Red” , “Pacific”, and two samples of “Maggie” as genetically identical. 2
Maggie is what Malaysians know as the humble kampung rose, its fragrance and resilience to hot weather ensuring its continued popularitey
EDOUARD
Rose Edouard is a natural or accidental hybrid between a China-rose and a Damask rose listed in 1837 in Hortus Mauritianus as a China rose native of eastern Indies. Legend has it that, on the island of Île de Bourbon (modern Réunion, in the Indian Ocean) sometime around the late 18th or very early 19th century, planters hedged two rose types in parallel rows: one a European/Oriental type probably Quatre Saisons also called Autumn Damask and the other a Chinese repeat‐flowering China-rose Old Blush.34 5
A gardener named Édouard Périchon noticed a seedling among these hedges that differed. He transplanted it to his garden, and eventually the Paris‐based botanist Jean Michel Bréon sent seeds of it to France (around 1820) where it became the founding form of the “Bourbon rose” class.
This rose is cultivated in India as R. borboniana and also known as Paneer rose is the most popular rose for use in garland making grown from the extreme south of India up to the northern plains where apart from use in temples and garland making, it is also used for the extraction of rose oil.
Bourbon roses in turn influenced later rose classes (Noisette, Hybrid-Teas) giving the modern garden rose much of its repeat-blooming character and rich fragrance.
THE INGENIOUS MR FAIRCHILD
Of all the David Austin roses I’ve purchased - one name stood out : “The Ingenious Mr Fairchild” was so odd that I was compelled to google it. Turns out it’s the title of a book by horticultural writer, Michael Leapman -h ere’s a description of the book:
“By the early eighteenth century, botanists were inching towards the shocking truth that plants had male and female organs and reproduced sexually.The first person to realize the practical implications of this was Thomas Fairchild, a London nurseryman, and celebrated author of The City Gardener. By transferring the pollen of a sweet william into the pistil of a carnation, he created a new plant that became known as Fairchild’s mule.The first man-made hybrid in Europe, it heralded the thousands of new varieties available to gardeners today. Scientific and religious debate raged around this primitive form of genetic engineering and satirists wrote lewd verses about sex in the flowerbeds and railed against meddling with God’s design.”
Understandably the man who named the rose, David Austin, would give a nod to the man who would enable him 300 years later to build a 20M GBP business meddling with god’s design, Frankensteining 150,000 trial roses a year without any issue nowadays, an outrage nowadays reserved for vaccines.
Keeping a Rose Garden
Growing roses has remained a feature of my gardening practise, but maintaining a rose garden is definitely harder than many of the other varieties of flowers that I grow. It wants more fertilising - weekly foliar sprays and monthly ground manure. They are quick to dry out and a vigil eye needs to be kept if there are too many dry days, but they also hate getting wet feet so the beds they get planted in need lot of preparation to ensure they are well drained.
They also require regular checking and pruning to ensure they don’t succumb to mould, infestations and rot- especially as I maintain them organically without pesticides. Despite all that additional care they can still quite quickly, spiral into poor health, die off and require replacing. Thankfully the rose garden sort of funds itself, I sun dry the roses to sell to bakers for garnish and beverage clients for infusing into their liqours - particularly the Damask variety.
