Rose 'Nevada' has opened in the last few days. It is one of the first cultivars whose name I learned, as it grew at the end of one of the borders at Killerton. We often visited in my childhood, and the gardens were a seminal influence, leaving me with a love of large rhododendrons and tree magnolias. I liked the 'Nevada', and it must have had a label, because the name stuck. It is a twentieth century shrub rose, producing its semi double white flowers at the start of the main rose season. It does not produce hips, which is a pity, but I still like it. The description on the incomparable Peter Beales website rates it as being suitable for poor soil and some shade, and suggests it could reach 2.5 metres. On our particular brand of poor soil it does not grow that tall, and every year some of its blackish stems have died and have to be cut out, but it is making a good show as of this moment. I mulched it generously in the spring with spent mushroom compost and dosed it with 6X and bonemeal, to try and stimulate some vigorous new growth.
Over in the rose bed behind the house another twentieth century shrub rose has just started into bloom, the pale pink single 'Sally Holmes'. She is a comparative youngster, younger than I am, being introduced in only 1976. Unlike 'Nevada' she produces repeat flushes of flowers through the summer, followed by fine clusters of red hips, if you don't dead-head at the end of the season. Her growth habit is more branching than 'Nevada', which throws upright shoots from ground level. Peter Beales gives a height as only 1.2 metres, but mine shot up to nearly twice that. I tried pruning the bushes fairly hard, once, and they resented it so fiercely that now I know only to remove any dead wood when I'm in rose pruning mode.
'Rhapsody in Blue' is not blue, but mauve. A nice shade of mauve, if you like that colour, which I do, but definitely not blue. There are as yet no true blue roses, and as far as I can see are not likely to be, unless gardeners suddenly decide that GM roses would be fine. For myself I am perfectly happy for roses not to be blue. 'Rhapsody in Blue', or 'Rhapsody in Mauve' as we might more accurately but less catchily call it, was the Floribunda Rose of the Year in 2003. The flowers are semi-double and scented, but there are no hips. I have mine too far back in the bed, where they are slightly overwhelmed by other roses, some of which have grown larger than I envisaged, and I can't get to them easily to sniff them, so that was a bad piece of planning on my part.
'Rose de Rescht' is on the cusp of opening, the first few buds having just come out. This in an old rose, a Portland, and has very double, rich purple flowers with neat flat tops, as if they had been sliced off with an extremely sharp knife. It is conceptually capable of repeat flowering, and you will see it put down as such in many books and catalogues, including by Peter Beales. What the books and catalogues do not spell out to you is that it will only produce a second flush of flowers if it produces a second burst of growth, and on poor soil in arid parts of the country it will not necessarily do that. There are no hips, and the remains of the old flowers are unsightly, so to keep the bush looking presentable through the summer you will need to spend a fair amount of time going over it after it has flowered. It is very generous with its flowers, and the effect when it is in full flight is superb. I put my plants at the front of the border, believing the part of the description which said they would grow 0.9 metres high, and despite the lack of repeat flowering they have gradually reached twice that. Perhaps I should chop them really hard, but I have not quite recovered my nerve after the unfortunate episode with 'Sally Holmes', and restrict myself to removing the oldest branches each winter, and shortening some of the longest growths rather cautiously.
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