Recycled Roses
I offer a good country home to recycled roses. People gift them (they're often free) if I'm prepared to turn up with my gardening gloves, secateurs, and shovel, and take them away.
Recycled Pink Rose
Over One Hundred Recycled Roses
So let me see - I'd estimate that more than hundred roses have joined my garden in this way. Oops - that's rather a collection!
Unknown Climbing Rose
Names and Colours Unknown
Naturally some of them arrive with names unknown. Often the previous owners have just moved house and are not rose fans, and have never seen the shrubs blooming. So the colour and size can be quite a surprise!
Gardening friends let me know if they're downsizing or changing a garden area, and I'll turn up with the trailer to take away their unwanted roses. Recently I took two trailer loads of 'white and yellow' roses away from a garden just around the corner. I was so excited!
Some sensible ex-owners leave their rose labels on! Recently I've acquired more Sally Holmes, more Icebergs, two Ingrid Bergmans, and an Ivey Hall. This last rose is specially bred for Lincoln University, so there's a local connection.
Over the years several possible David Austins have been rescued - they're pastel and fluffy. Unknown recycled rugosas, old-fashioned roses without their labels, plus a host of Flower carpet roses have also joined my garden.
Three Anonymous Beauties
Sometimes there will be a logical way to guess what the rose is. Just Joey is a recycled rose which I think I've identified correctly, just from my knowledge of which hybrid teas were popular in older suburban rose gardens. Then only certain David Austin English roses are distributed in New Zealand, so I think I've named the Dove correctly.
Rescued Rose
Princess Diana Rose?
The first rose I bought (for fifty cents) in an online auction was supposed to be Princess Diana. Well, she looks awfully 'icebergish' to me - I can't really see much difference.
Put it this way - I really can't see that this rose is special enough to be named after the Princess. In fact, after her first year here she's been demoted into a less conspicuous garden area. Sorry about that!
Demoted!
I did do a Google search, and was presented with a motley lot of pictures. In the case of the Princess Diana rose the collection included white roses, pink roses, white roses edged with pink, yellow roses edged with pink roses - I daren't add my rescued so-called Princess to the pile!
There's more to identifying a recycled rose than the flowers, anyway. The shape of the shrub, the fragrance, the type of buds, the time of blooming, the style of leaf - all these details need to be stirred into in a rose-detective's pot.
And sometimes all that's needed is a chance remark - my goodness, that rose looks like Emanuel, or Clare, or Ellen - to put me right (or wrong).
Another Unknown Rose - Possibly Old
Recycled roses in a garden deserve to be applauded, photographed, and enjoyed. They've been saved, passed along the chain for someone else (me) to enjoy, and that's a great thing. As long as they're healthy who cares what their names are?