R&R David Austin English Roses

Out of their catalog I bought three rose bushes from David Austin English Roses this year. This was my second purchase from them and I have been really pleased with the performance of both roses.  English Roses are relatively new group roses coming to prominence in the 1970's. They originated from crosses made between certain Old Roses and Modern Hybrid Teas and Floribundas. The roses combine the fragrance of Old Roses (something my wife and I enjoy) with the color range and repeat-flowering of a Modern Roses.
English Roses come in a wide variety of types. There are roses for small gardens, highly fragrant roses, roses for hedges, climbers and ramblers. The English Roses have proven to be resistance to disease which is important considering the way rose rosette virus has attacked the Knockout varieties. The catalog is over 100 pages and offers about 200 varieties. The David Austin English Roses run 25 to 30 dollars each plus shipping and handling. There is a discount for purchasing three of the same rose.
The roses come as bare root plants, so it is important to soak them in a bucket of water for 12 hours in order to rehydrate them. English Roses are heavy feeders and require fertilizing about every thirty days. The roses also require regular watering which so far this year has not been much of a problem. So far this year,  I have had to put the sprinklers out just once. Of course this could, and probably will, change as we get into July, August and September.

Young Lycidas

My first purchase, three years ago,  was an Old Rose Hybrid Young Lycidas. The rose is very deep magenta with purple mixed in. Young Lycidas won Best Shrub in Portland's Best Rose Contest in 2013 and was awarded the top prize for at the Cocur Internaticional de Roses, Barcelona. So it's highly fragrant and it's named after my favorite poem Lycidas by John Milton. Unfortunately, it's too long to put in this blog, but I highly recommend reading it. I planted this by my deck in the backyard and it gets afternoon sun from 1PM to 5PM so it's performed reasonably well without full sun. It runs about 4 x 3 feet and has about 90 petals.

   The Poet's Wife was this year's purchase. The rose is light yellow  color with a great fragrance. It's produced flowers in abundance since May after planting it at the end of March. Supposedly, the fragrance gets stronger as it ages, we'll see. It's planted in my full sun bed in the front yard along with some lily bulbs I purchased from White Flower farms. I may have messed up by putting the bulbs in front of the roses, of course, the roses haven't yet reached their full size of 4 x 3.5 feet. The Poet's Wife's was introduced in 2015 so it hasn't had the opportunity to win any awards but I like it. It's yellow and I really love yellow flowers. It has about 77 petals.


The Poet's Wife

Below is a poem by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans. Her novel Middlemarch is 12th on the New York Times greatest novels of all time. It's really great.

Roses by George Eliot

You love the roses - so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!