Traditionally, roses have been an essential component of the English garden. They've always been found alongside another long-established cottage garden favorites like the lupins, potentials, hollyhocks and geraniums.
The new variety of 'English Garden Roses' produced by David Austin roses, in the united kingdom, although not recognized as a new type of rose, has taken the established rose-growing world by storm. These newest of introductions are, actually, a hybrid, developed by crossing the 'Old Garden Roses' using the more modern Hybrid Tea and floribunda roses.
The developer, David Austin, attempted to produce roses that were similar to those grown during Victorian times. Roses which had the appeal and majesty of the bygone age. A time when roses were bred to embrace that now, all-too-often, forgotten charm of fragrance. A lot of roses, in recent years, have been bred for his or her visual appeal alone, with fragrance a forgotten quality.
Modern gardeners have always been asking growers to return to developing roses that are once again perfumed. How much romance is lost from a rose with no perfume? You set it to your nose and rather than a heady fragrance - Nothing! No bouquet, no heady scent, nothing. A rose with no perfume is a mockery, a parody of itself.
These new English roses have blooms which are, in shape, reminiscent of the classic gallica and damask roses but they are able to flower repeatedly a bit longer, during the summer, with the additional advantage of a much wider, more sophisticated range of colors. They are a summer bloomer, usually between June and September. The variations in coloring are greatly similar to the old garden roses of history.
These roses may be grown like a large, well-rounded bush or like a superb hunker down climber and they work perfectly alongside peonies and may indeed work where peonies won't. They have a larger head, more petals and much more fragrance than your typical rose.
When these roses were initially trialed, in certain of the warmer states of america, they were found to grow considerably taller than when planted within the cooler climes of the UK. Which has proven to be a bonus for Americans simply because they now have an even more versatile rose.
Austin's roses have typically achieved what they set out to do. They've succeeded in creating roses using the old fashioned qualities of a heady perfume, and Rosa gallica style flowers using the modern traits of repeat flowering and much more up-to-date colors. But it has come at a cost.
These roses have not been blessed using the disease resistance and inherent hardiness of the Old Garden Rose parents. Most of them are prone to the same ailments that badly modify the modern hybrid tea and floribunda roses. Another potential drawback with this type of rose is their insufficient hardiness in zones north of Zone 5, in the united states.
Regardless of these shortcomings, these roses happen to be taken to the heart by the rose buying public and lots of other rose growers are earning them available too through an international licensing scheme.
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