Monsieur Tillier Rose
Monsieur Tillier Rose
When I buy a rose I usually rip off its label, thinking I'll never forget the name. I've got a good memory, right? And guess what? I do forget, quite quickly. And so the rose Monsieur Tillier spent years growing happily and anonymously in my garden.
The trouble was that I thought he was a Doctor, not a Monsieur. I spent many a frustrating minute searching for images of roses so named. Then I wondered if he was a Cardinal. No luck there, either. But I was sure he had some sort of title...
A Monsieur!
Finally I tried Monsieur, and there he was! Checked back in my journal, and found his name, with the record of planting him in the Hen House Garden in the year 2000. Phew! Sometimes I am very thankful for my extremely detailed gardening journals!
His colour is very distinct - a muddy version of old-rose pink, if that makes any colour sense. Different rose nurseries describe him orange-pink, salmon-pink, and one gives the heady mixture of bright pink darkening to brick red. Peter Beales's catalogue puts him as red! As you can see, he's a bit of a muddly mixture, colourwise.
He's an old chap, too - a tea rose, bred by Alexandre Bernaix in 1891. My Monsieur is rangy and tall, and he's been with me for nineteen years. Luckily he seems happy in the Hen-House Garden with less sunshine than roses normally like to experience.