Winter Nadir

Friends, ProfessorRoush has reached, at last, his Winter Nadir.  I've had it.  I've spent far more time than I can spare discussing the subtle beauty of peeling bark on bare trees.  I've sung rhapsodies to the grandeur of evergreens blanketed by virgin snow.  I've waxed eloquent over the sturdiness and form of ornamental grasses and I've proclaimed the glories of statues and trellises that form the bones of my garden.  There is only so much comfort a gardener can manufacture for himself in the depths of winter and I'm leaking hope like a garden hose run over with a lawnmower.

"Bones of my garden";  that's a pretty good description of what lies just outside the windows of my frost-bound prison.  I see only the bland, tan landscape of the Kansas Flint Hills surrounding the garden's skeleton, flesh ripped away from the carcass by a carnivorous winter and blown away to distant lands.  Left behind are twiggy blobs of roses and dried clematis, sinew clinging desperately to the backbones against the northern wind.  Tattered low remnants of iris, withered daylily, and brittle sedum litter the soil.   Here and there stand a few lonely statues, joints around which the garden revolves in summer, now reduced to frozen arthritic slumber.  Between the bones of the garden lie the paths, circulation routes around the garden's body, as dry and brown now as the plants they used to serve.

I've lost my way amidst the fog and sleet.  I need desperately to feel the pulse and flow of life beginning again from the frozen ground.  Photos of past summers, like these, provide no condolences, only grief and despair for lost gardens and lost time.  I have no remaining faith that my garden will ever again appear green and verdant, lush and bountiful.  It seems impossible that the garden can fill again with so many flowers and so much life.  My soul is with the garden, frozen in place, withdrawn to a timeless and lifeless plane, shrunk down to a dry kernel of memory.

I must, I know, endure.  I search the garden endlessly for signs of life, the first stirring of snow crocus, the first tip of a green daffodil.  I amble stooped over the garden beds, at times on hands and knees, pulling back the mulch in the search for the promise of tomorrow.  I watch the peony bed most closely, diligent scrutiny in the sure knowledge that life will first beat there again, if anywhere life remains.  Wispy and ethereal crocus and tulips and daffodils may indeed be the vanguards of warmer winds, scouts following the retreat of winter.  Yet still, it is the impossible extravagance of the peonies, buxom and luscious in youth and vitality, that herald the Spring for me, reclothing the old bones of the garden and gardener once more in bountiful flesh and leafy skin.  Hold tight yet the remnants of courage, for peonies shall surely return to save us.

Montebello's Duchesse

It is with more than a little surprise that a recent post on GardenWeb.com reminded me that I've never blogged about one of my favorite Old Garden Roses, the Gallica 'Duchesse de Montebello'.  The sheer delinquency of my neglect bothers me deeply and is a worrisome sign of my aging.

'Duchesse de Montebello' was bred by Jean Laffay in 1824, and is variously referred to as a Hybrid China or a Hybrid Gallica.  Whatever her breeding, this etheral, exquisite, once-blooming pink double rose is one of the upper hoi oligoi, a regal lady of the rose world, comfortable associating in snooty company such as the beautiful 'Madame Hardy'.  She is, in simpler modern terms, a Supermodel of the rose world.  She opens from rounded buds into a quartered and sometimes cupped form that usually has a greenish-white pip at the center.  Her hue in my garden seems to depend on the temperature, with deeper pinks seen in cold weather as evidenced by the difference in the blooms pictured on this page.  'Duchesse de Montebello has a strong sweet fragrance and has a minimally thorny nature.  Her overall form, both flower and the vase-shaped bush, is delicate, but she is very hardy in my 6A climate (the Swedish Rose society recommends her for Sweden!)  and she is free of blackspot and mildew without spraying. 

At maturity in my garden, 'Duchesse de Montebello' stands 5 feet tall and 3 feet wide this year.  She did get up to 6 feet previously, but I severely pruned her two years back and she has behaved herself since.  I will tell you that I've noticed some tendency to roam as she has aged, recently finding a couple of nearby-suckered daughters growing at her feet like illegitimate offspring from a seven-year-itch inspired dalliance.  I have not reprimanded her for her promiscuity, but merely transplanted the daughters across the garden, spreading the wealth, as it were.

'Duchesse de Montebello' is so good that she has been used in the breeding programs of several rosarians, among which are David Austin and Paul Barden.  I have previously written that Paul Barden has mated her with  'St Swithins' to breed 'Allegra' and 'Abraham Darby' to breed 'Marianne'.  Paul Barden writes  that her ability to pass on genes that result in remonant offspring suggests that she is, in fact, a result of a Gallica cross with China or Noisette blood, as some have suggested.  Whatever her heritage, this is a rose I can recommend to anyone who looks to add a classic Old Garden Rose to their gardens.

A Lost Rose

Saturday, on Gardenweb.com, I learned that the great rosarian Peter Beales had passed on to a more perfect garden on January 26, 2013, at the age of 76.  There are few, I'm sure, in the group of gardeners who love roses or follow rose breeding, that are unaware of Mr. Beales and his legacy of roses.  Born on July 22, 1936, he started out early on a path that would lead to a lifetime working with roses, first as an apprentice at LeGrice Roses and then serving as manager of  Hillings Rose Nursery in Surrey, working under the guidance of Graham Stuart Thomas and later succeeding Mr. Thomas as Foreman of Roses.  In 1968, he formed Peter Beales Roses in Norfolk, a firm still in existence and found online at www.classicroses.co.uk.  He started exhibiting at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 1971 and won 19 Gold medals during his lifetime, the last just in May of 2012.  He twice won the  RHS Lawrence Medal for the best exhibit of the year at an RHS show, and served as president of the Royal National Rose Society in 2003. 

Helpmefind.com lists 23 roses bred or discovered by Peter Beales and another 42 roses bred or discovered by his daughter Amanda, who continues to run the business with her brother Richard.  I'm sad to admit that not a single one of these roses has made it across the Pond to my garden, at least under their British names, but I'll make an effort to purchase at least one for his legacy in my garden.  Where Mr. Beales had his greatest influence on American rosarians, however, lies in the prolific output of his pen.  Helpmefind.com lists 9 books on roses authored by Peter Beales.  I have copies in my library of the 1992 edition of Roses (1985, Henry Holt), and the 1997 edition of Classic Roses (1985, Henry Holt).  Both are classics of the field and I refer to them often for authoritative information on old roses.  As a simple testament to Peter Beales' influence in the world of roses, if you look on Amazon at Peter's author page, and then move over to the side where it lists other authors with books purchased by people who have bought Peter's books, that list reads like a Who's Who of rosedom;  Clair Martin, Stephen Scanniello, William Welch, Thomas Christopher, David Austin, Graham Stuart Thomas and Liz Druitt, among many others.  During a search on Amazon, I learned of his third classic work, Twentieth Century Roses (1988), which I must find a copy of and  soon.  Later works that I'd never before glimpsed, including A Passion for Roses (2004) and Visions of Roses (1996), also look interesting.   Mr. Beales' obituaries also list a 2008 autobiography, Rose Petals and Muddy Footprints, that I can't find for sale anywhere right now, but which I'll keep an eye out for in the future.

From his obituary on the  website of The Telegraph, I picked up this most interesting story;  "Once, while visiting Jersey to give a lecture, Beales was passing a garden when he spied a peach-coloured “Gardenia”, an old climbing variety bred in America in 1899 which had been thought lost. He knocked at the door and, getting no reply, turned back. But one of the rare rose’s shoots had caught on his trousers, and when he got home he successfully propagated it — one of many varieties he managed to save from extinction."   Yeah, right.  So there you have it;  Peter Beales, extraordinary rosarian, author, nurseryman, father....and, just like the rest of us, not above stooping to a little discrete rose rustling for the greater good of mankind.  A rosarian after my own heart.

Generous Gardeners

If you've spent any quality time among gardening people, you know that they come from all walks of life and exist in all spices and flavors.  Even after several years of association with a much varied group of Extension Master Gardeners, I would be hard-pressed to name five common traits among the various personalities.  I believe, however, that I have identified one characteristic that all gardeners seem to have in common; generosity.  Whether we're digging up starts of daylilies for a passing stranger, handing out flower seeds at garden shows, or just plain sharing our knowledge of our hobby, gardeners are generous to a fault.  Well, to be completely honest, except in those few occasions where we've got a new plant that no one else is growing.  In that case a little one-up-man-ship is certainly excusable as a very human failing.

I was the recipient of grand gardening generosity recently when I received a surprise package from a reader just after Christmas containing two marvelous DVD's.  Knowing of my rose passions, this thoughtful individual sent me a DVD of Louise Mitchell's 2012 documentary of the preservation of the roses in Sacramento's Historic Rose Garden,  and what appears to be a bootleg copy of Roger Phillip's 1993 six-part series for the BBC titled "Quest for the Rose."

I've enjoyed both immensely, initially diving quickly into the Cemetery Rose documentary, for a fascinating story of the collision of passion and opportunity among old rose lovers.  Lately, however, I've spent time again and again with Roger Phillips on his travels.  That six-part documentary is not only great entertainment, it's highly educational, and a perfect companion to Phillip's book of the same name.  With his friend and coauthor, Martyn Rix, popping in and out of the series, Roger Phillips travels the world following the development of modern roses, from the first 35 million year old rose fossils found in Colorado, to Turkey, to China, to France, to Britain, and to America.  Along the way he visits Josephine's Malmaison and Alcatraz, he has a British museum expert write the word "rose" in the scrawl of ancient Babylonia, and he follows Petrie to the monasteries of China, traveling in cars, boats, bikes, and on foot.  We meet rosarians who are all old friends to us through their writings: Graham Stuart Thomas, Peter Beales, Fred Boutin, Miriam Wilkins, Ellen Willmott, and Clair Matin, among others.  To hear the real voices of these people, several now dead, strikes me as deeply as listening to John Kennedy's inaugural or Neil Armstrong's first moon steps.  Phillips, himself, comes off as one of those eccentric rose fanatics we're all familiar with, inseparable from a really hideous orange pair of reading glasses, and bounding up mountains in France in search of a wild rose whose location is known only from notes in a 100 year old book.  The scene of an ecstatic Roger Phillips dropping to his knees on a steep hillside to sniff a wild R. gallica will be with me forever.

I can't thank my benefactor enough for my Christmas gift, this entertainment that has sustained me through the winter, but as you have probably noticed, I am keeping the source unnamed here lest he/she be hounded by hordes of salivating rose lovers seeking copies of their own.  I have, however, in gratitude,  passed on a copy of Phillip's series to another rose nut, another link in the chain of a passion passed on from enthusiast to fanatic, zealot to fellow addict.