Leonardo da Vinci Pink Rose
I love, love, love pink roses. One I didn't know anything was Leonardo da Vinci, who turned out to be one of the most beautiful in my garden. He had such generous clusters of blooms, and the pink colour was just right.
When buying new roses, perceived strength of colour often wins me over to the deep reds or flashy yellows. So I bought Leonardo da Vinci, Kathryn Morley, and Ispahan to compensate, and planted all three pink roses around the edge of the Pond Paddock garden. Initially Leonardo got a bit lost in a crowd of self-seeded red Centranthus, but this summer he's risen above the perennial flowers. Actually, their colour rather sets him off nicely.
Leonardo da Vinci Roses
But what on earth made the rose breeder (Alain Meilland) choose such an amazing man to name a middle-of-the-pink-road rose after? Leonardo da Vinci was an extraordinary man - a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer (thanks, Wikipedia). Some rose catalogues talk of the rose as 'lovely' and 'well contained' - words that can bear no relation to this man-genius.
The Thinking Man's Pink?
All I can say is that he looked beautifully old-fashioned, started off being robust of bush, and was beautifully, naturally pink - a pretty pink, without the slightest hint of pastel fragility. The intellectual, thinking man's pink, perhaps? Enjoy!
For the record, Leonardo started sulking, so he was replanted in the sunny Allotment Garden. It wasn't the Centranthus - the Pond Paddock trees were just getting too big, and providing far too much shade. I couldn't have Leonardo getting the sulks, creatively speaking.
Oops...
Oops. Sorry, Leonardo, but it seems my care and nurture wasn't quite good enough for you. Being shifted from the dry shade of the Wattle Woods into the dry heat of the (non-irrigated) Allotment garden didn't really help, either. RIP.