There’s no pinning a good rose down – everything from romance to racing carnivals is associated with them. They can be wild and blousy, or they can be upright and regimented. Some roses crinkle, and others look crisp.
Many make a show of their scent. While the thousands of roses strewn around horseracing tracks this month were universally flawless – the product of meticulous care and tireless monitoring – most of us keep far looser standards at home and still get brilliant blooms. In fact, sometimes, the most atmospheric roses are the ones teetering right on the edge of being out of control.
Take the wild-looking Mutabilis, the rose I currently covet the most. My mother grows it butting up against salvias and forget-me-nots in a bed where – the best part – it largely looks after itself. In their book Secrets from the Flower Farm, Rebecca Starling and Christine McCabe speak about the “serious rose revival” in floristry.
Credit: Christopher Morrison When they emerge, the flowers of this vigorous bush from China are the palest of apricots, but they gradually take on more coppery hues, eventually morphing into a rich, vivid pink. Better still, the petals can look ever so sweetly crumpled. Rugosa roses also have a beguilingly wayward touch with the added bonus that they are supremely easy to care for and, in another big win, often flaunt large beguiling hips after the flowers.
Roses are plants that can just keep giving. Loading In the vase as well, floristry is hea.
