The Old-fashioned roses in the Rondel Garden

10 Apr '07 3:13 pm

I'm in two minds about the 'Viridiflora'. I've see it in gardening books and I can't quite make up my mind whether I like it or dislike it. I'll have to think about it. Very Happy

I particularly like your 'singles'. I only have (does a mental count) 3 at the moment, including Mutabilis and Meg. I also have Flower Carpet Red which is only just single with a leetle bit more of an overlap.

12 Apr '07 4:58 am

Dear Jack, thanks for making a return visit to the Rondel garden. I think it is one of my most favorite of all your beautiful garden areas. The single roses are so sweet and uncomplicated aren't they?

15 Apr '07 8:09 pm

Here are two more photos which somehow escaped being posted last time. Both are Bourbons, and both tend to ball in wet weather, so that they can be the most depressing bushes of soggy sadness, the colour of weak cheap instant coffee. Yet both flower quite prolifically and when a bloom is good, it is exquisite. Souvenir de la Malmaisson, (1843) with its flattened and quartered shape, is more typically 'old-fashioned', whilst Boule de Neige (1867) - meaning 'snowball' - could easily be mistaken for a modern Hybrid Tea. Both are wonderfully scented.

I also post a second example of a marbled Nicotiana. Usually the colours are ‘flat’ but in these the veins are darker. Has anyone ever seen this before? I first noticed this about four years ago - that after ten years - I kid you not - in which the colour range gradually grew wider and darker, so that I have all shades from white through mauve to purple and through pink and red to burgundy. The original mother seeds were the old fashioned species or near species, first grown by Francois' mom in the 40s and 50s. It has happened to all the dark colours, but not all plants are marbled – most often seen in the Rondel Garden. I’m baffled. In fact perhaps I should post under 'unidentified plants and flowers'!

(The old girl always had a wicked twinkle in the eye. I do believe she is behind all this - showing her approval, I trust!)

16 Apr '07 3:47 am

I love the new rose pictures. I have noticed that all my roses are balling in the last week because we have had such wet, changeable weather. Before, they were opening into beautiful blossoms, now just sad balls. The blue nicotiana is indeed an odd one. I have never seen one like this. I think you might be right about the virus; however, I suppose another possibility is that they have been reverting back to the form of some former parantage. Since they came from saved seed, this could be the case. Whatever the cause, they are lovely.

17 Apr '07 7:37 pm

Jack!! I agree with Faith!! What adorable beauties! And what tender, romantic, artistic photos! And this bicolored Nicotiana, has this lovely colour always? I mean this special variety is always bicolored? Or, Faith's explanation is why she is so lovely?

The Old-fashioned roses in the Rondel Garden

The Rondel Garden

Bourbons

More lovely roses

What beauties!!