Gardening in the Valley of Heart's Delight

Tournament of Roses Continued


The Prince	Continuing the tour of the rose garden, here are a few more from my diverse collection. The Prince is another of the David Austin introductions (see the May rose page for more discussion). The color is a deep, dark red and it's richly scented — lovely!
Sheer Bliss is a hybrid tea and it's magnificent! I'm a sucker for roses that shade from cream to pink, and this one is gorgeous. And productive. And fragrant. And long-lasting. And it has the prettiest pink anthers, so even after the petals fall off, the pink centers remain. (Your memory does not deceive you — most roses have yellow centers.) This photo doesn't do it justice because the coloring is much more delicate than appears here. It's my current favorite, if you hadn't guessed.		Sheer Bliss
Salmon-colored rose	This is a rescuee, transplanted from mostly clay soil and harsh but short-lived afternoon sun to a comfy bed in full sun. Moving established roses can be difficult, but one, ahem, advantage of clay soil is that the roots don't grow very far, so it was easy to move most of the root ball. Now it's happier than it has ever been. Its name has been lost in the mists of antiquity (defined as about 10 years in this case) but we're happy to see it thrive, whatever it is.
Double Delight is intensely fragrant, extremely prolific, and exceptionally disease-resistant, to say nothing of the stunningly dramatic flowers it has. It's a hybrid tea that's readily available and I would recommend it to any beginners. The folks at the Guadalupe rose garden cite it as a rose which can be pruned to almost nothing and recover. That sounds like a good bet for places with harsh winters!		Double Delight
Mister Lincoln	Finally we have Mister Lincoln, an old stand-by red. Pretty and, at times, prolific, but not as scented as I expected, alas. Vagaries of climate, weather, propagation? It's lovely, nonetheless. Sometimes one needs a simple, red rose.