Coming up Olivia Roses | Financial Times

Roses are having another spectacular year. Outside the warmer parts of London, their flowering season has not been as early as in 2020, but it has lost none of the vigour of that year and the previous three. On June 7 I saw my first picture-postcard house with roses trained tidily along its whitewashed facade. The loosely formed yellow flowers of Golden Showers were on one side of the front door and the double red flowers of Crimson Cascade were on the other. There is a profusion to Britain’s climbing roses in June which is unrivalled. Who cares if we are locked down when we can travel short distances, notice them and enjoy them?

Roses have been in gardens for thousands of years, but they are not standing still. I will look at three examples, rose hedges, roses in pots and red roses up walls. The first sounds seductive: who would not like a rose hedge, flowery, colourful and scented when in bloom? It would not need to be long: half a dozen yards would suffice.

Until quite recently I would have directed you to that excellent group of roses, the hybrid musks. They go back to hybridising in Germany in 1904, but took off in the 1920s with an invaluable English clergyman, the Rev Joseph Pemberton, who bred most of the best. If you like “old” roses, the musks now qualify, though they once seemed the dawn of the new. Pemberton’s marvellous silvery-pink Felicia is one of the best, and the self-describing Buff Beauty, bred by an affiliated nurseryman, would have joined it as my two first choices for hedging up to 4ft or 5ft. Both flower twice, but Buff Beauty tends to develop mildew in autumn. They are still good hedging choices.

I now know even better. Five years ago, I planted the hedge that is my pride of the moment. It is made up of the pink-flowered Olivia Rose Austin, named by the great breeder David Austin in honour of his granddaughter. It came on to the market in 2014 and in winter 2015 I spaced bushes of it about 3ft apart down either side of a broad paved path, making a double hedge about 15 yards long. I was acting on the advice of Austin himself and his nursery’s managers.

I wanted, like many of you, a rose hedge about 4ft high whose flowers would be paleish pink. In the early 1980s Austin had suggested the scented pink rose Ispahan, which ought to have been registered as Isfahan, but was misspelt. It was an excellent choice, but although it flowered early, it flowered only once. Temporary building works required it to be moved and replaced, whereupon I appealed to the maestro yet again. He urged me to plant Olivia Rose Austin, saying it was the best rose he had so far bred. Without seeing it, I obeyed and have had nothing but ease and delight from it ever since.

It is in full flower now, but this display is only the first of three before late autumn. Other roses flower once or sometimes twice, but Olivia Rose Austin flowers three times a year. It also looks smart and exciting in spring before the flowers appear because its young leaves are a coppery colour before turning green. I have done nothing to it since planting it, no spraying, no pruning, no feeding. It went into ground dug to a depth of two spades and well manured. In return it has done exactly what was promised.

Until this year its flat-centred cupped flowers hung down a little on their stems. While thanking Austin for his advice, I remarked on this apparent failing but he said it would improve after three years or so. Again, he has been vindicated. This year, fewer of the flowers are drooping, and so bumble bees, the bees for pollination, have been visiting it happily. Even passing Oxford professors have noticed the scent, especially on a cool evening. It is not as strong as Ispahan’s but it exists. Unlike Ispahan it is a flowery miracle for three months of summer.

Alternative Austin proposals were his white-flowered William and Catherine, bred for their royal wedding day in 2011, and Princess Anne, a rich pink, which is deeper and stronger in colour than pale pink Olivia Rose. Both flower repeatedly and are my second and third choices. They make the same point, however. Roses have not been standing still and the hybrid musks, though still very good, are not now my top choices for hedging.

What about roses in pots? Here I have been old-fashioned since about 1995, and am now out of date. I planted Camaieux, widely recommended for the job, a pink, white and purple-streaked Gallica rose that was bred in 1830. It grows only 3ft high and is good, but once flowering. When my back is turned, it always catches the black spot disease on its leaves by mid-July. I am dumping it in favour of the royal couple Wills and Kate and the stalwart Princess Anne. The latter is billed as “best for health” and “best for flowering” in the Austin list. Those credits are good enough for me. If you have been too loyal to once-flowering old roses in pots, plant them elsewhere and move over to modernity.

What about that irresistible specification, a dark red rose to grow up a wall? Here, David Austin’s breeding has less to offer. For years I grew the tall Etoile de Hollande, a good scarlet crimson, but it is a rose for high walls only, eventually preferring more than 10ft in height. On a pale wall I have enjoyed the superb Guinee, a truly dark crimson, but it is not very vigorous and catches bad mildew.

Since 2009 I have found a better option in the deep scarlet band of the range. Peter Beales launched Highgrove, chosen for the Prince of Wales’s garden, where it is indeed excellent, beside the main doorway from which the prince usually enters his garden, I recall. On a smallish non-royal wall it is excellent too, quite loosely petalled in flower but unmistakably scented. Usefully, it reaches only about 8ft.

Another option is Crimson Glory, launched as a climber in the 1940s but newish to my horizon. The flowers are beautifully shaped, being hybrid teas, and have a fine scent. It needs a wall at least 10ft high, but it flowers twice, very freely first time round. My latest rediscovery is more compact, needing, like Highgrove, only 8ft-10ft. Called Roundelay, it was launched in Australia as a bush rose in 1970 but almost nobody in Britain noticed it. In fact it has lovely rounded, rather flat flowers with wrinkled centres and a fruity scent, some say of raspberries. It has just been reintroduced in a climbing form by Peter Beales nursery (classicroses.co.uk). It certainly fills a gap. As a relaunch, I count it as a new launch.

Twenty years ago, my best rose for hedging, best roses for pots and these lower-growing climbing reds were not in existence or not much known. Like their garden owners, roses have not stood still. In this lovely year for them we are ever more spoiled for choice.

Follow @FTProperty on Twitter or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram to find out about our latest stories first