EnglishRosesNorthernUtah.html

English Roses that do well in a Northern Utah Garden
Joan Katherine Shaw

David Austin's English Rose 'Constance Spry '

David Austin's English Rose, 'Constance Spry'

Our first English Rose here at DragonGoose Farm was 'Constance Spry,' shown above, which is also David Austin's first "English Rose," introduced in 1961. I read a glowing description of this rose in The Graham Stewart Thomas Rose Book along with two photographs of the rose as climbers, and sent for the plant immediately. It grows to fourteen feet here over an arbor at the west front of the house. Since the rose did so well and gave us so much pleasure, I soon added three more: two on an arbor, one on each side, on the extreme north end of the grounds, and the third on a post visible from our bedroom window from which the ends drape down almost to the ground.

'Constance' starts her enormous bloom around mid-June here and continues until mid-July, depending on the weather. The fact that 'Constance' blooms only once a season doesn't deter me from counting this rose as my favorite, since the month-long bloom is spectacular, engulfing both plant and arbor by the end of June.The blossoms are clear pink, full, cupped, and have a lovely fragrance -- Thomas calls it "the sweet fragrance of myrrh."

English Rose Beginnings

David Austin first started crossing Old Roses with the Modern Hybrid Teas and Floribundas in the 1950s, intent on developing a new race which he eventually called "English Roses." Describing these roses, Austin writes "They combine the unique character and beauty of the Old Roses, together with something of their natural and more graceful shrubby growth, with the excellent repeat-flowering qualities of the Modern Roses. "

He goes on to describe combining these attributes with all the varying colors that are found in modern roses such as the yellows, salmons, deep reds, and corals. They also bring with them the fragrance, at times intense fragrance, of the Old Roses since Austin has always been careful to breed from the most fragrant of the Old Roses

'Constance Spry' is thus hybridized from the Floribunda 'Dainty Maid' (bred by E.B. Le Grice) with the Gallica 'Belle Isis' (quite fragrant, as are most Gallicas). The thick-caned, exceptionally hardy and vigorous 'Constance Spry' is one of the pleasant surprises rose breeding always hold for the breeder, for both her parents are comparatively small.

The reason for these surprises is that both the Old Roses and the modern have such a mix of plants in their genetic makeup -- generations upon generations of them -- that anything can happen in crossing one plant with another. And David Austin, in more than forty years of rose breeding, has done thousands of crosses in developing his English Roses.

English Rose Graham Thomas in Late August

The great rosarian and garden writer, Graham Stewart Thomas (-2003), once asked one of the judges of the Royal National Rose Society in England in the late 1980s why so few of Austin's roses had received any recognition he was told they were "too lanky." Their standard for shrub roses at that time called for the shrub to be, as Thomas describes them, "nothing more than an overgrown Floribunda."

English Roses in Northern Utah

Of the more than 20 English roses we have at DragonGoose Farm, I would say that quite a few are "Lanky." Especially in this category are 'Graham Thomas' himself, a lovely rich yellow rose with a tea rose fragrance and shiny, pale green leaves. I have three of these together and fasten them all to one stake. They seem to want to climb without the length to do much about it, coming to about mid-thigh, actually. But the blossoms are spectacular in June nevertheless, and the repeat bloom continues until frost.

Our one plant of 'Abraham Darby', on the other hand, grows beautifully, staked and drooping down, heavy with many cupped, full flowers in apricot-yellow with a fruity fragrance. Austin notes that the rose is named after one of the founding figures of the Industrial Revolution, who lived in Shropshire, a county in which Austin's nursery is located.

Abraham Darby

'Brother Cadfael', a rose I bought because I enjoyed so much reading Ellis Peter's Brother Cadfael mysteries, has medium pink blossoms that are deeply cupped with incurving petals and a fragrance much like 'Constance Spry' . It grows to three, sometimes four feet here, but it suffers now from too much shade which keeps it back from its full potential. Two days ago, however, we had a sudden and terrific thunderstorm with gusts that were said to reach 80 miles an hour and we lost so much of a close-by Siberian Elm that we're going to have it cut down. Siberian Elms are fast growing, notoriously weak-wooded, and continually lose quite large limbs in much milder windstorms than this recent one. So the elm to the north of Brother Cadfael is also destined for the ax as well. As I mentioned in an earlier essay (Cutting Back I), these elms breed like rabbits and both of these trees are seedlings that I allowed to survive when they were relatively young and graceful and giving only dappled shade.

Ah, 'Evelyn'! Lanky, yes. A climber? Yes. It grows to at least six feet in its present location and has large, heavy blooms with a swirl of apricot petals in a shallow, saucer-like shape. Very Old Rose looking, it has an equally lovely fragrance -- fruity and peach-like.

Near 'Evelyn' is Austin's 'Heritage' that gives us soft pink blooms that fade to very light pink at the edges as they age. The 'Heritage' canes extend well enough to climb to six feet if they're staked. Pruned, it can stay bush-like. The fragrance here is carnation-like.

On an exposed corner beside the rather steep drive into the front of our place is a plant of 'Jude the Obscure,' a flash of buff yellow as one comes driving up, the blossoms darker in the middle. These blossoms are chalice-shaped, the petals incurved, and the fragrance Old-Rose at its best. This bush is sitting out there all by itself and needs no staking, growing nicely into a sturdy 3x3 shrub.

In our white garden, we have three plants of Austin's 'Fair Bianca', with pure white, very neat blossoms that emerge from rounded buds that flatten to saucer shape. Very fresh looking, with a generous rebloom. Another white, one of my favorites, is Austin's 'Swan'. A vigorous plant growing to five feet, it has large and elegant white, ruffled tea-rose-shaped blossoms that open to show a slightly buff interior, nicely fragrant. I have a post behind it, but it really needs no staking. Rebloom is spotty without a good pruning after the first flush of blossoms.

'Swan' (Larry Cannon) Note the legs of a resident white spider on the left of the open bloom

Two additional vigorous pinks among Austin's roses, are 'Mary Rose' and 'The Countryman'. and they both do beautifully here in Northern Utah. The plant of 'Mary Rose' has been in our front border for about four years now. The bush stays upright and nicely shrubby, the loose-petaled, rose-pink blossoms have an Old Rose fragrance. Austin reports that he named the rose after Henry VIII's flagship when it was recovered from the sea after more than four hundred years. It certainly performs here as the "first class garden shrub" that David Austin claims it is.

Several years ago I sent for two plants of Austin's 'The Countryman', planted them in the U-shaped garden across the oval drive from our house, and more or less forgot about them. Through this benign neglect they've performed amazing well, in spite of being nearly engulfed several times by the nearby sprawling, old world Rosa eglanteria (described here) . 'The Countryman' is the result of a back-cross to a Portland Rose. The Portlands do better in zones warmer than Northern Utah's 4 and 5, but the genetic mix appears to do no harm to this very vigorous plant. David Austin describes this rose as one with a low arching growth of about three feet in height. The plants growing here reach a good four feet. The deep pink flowers of 'The Countryman' have a charming Old Rose blowsiness, peony-like, quite large, and with a bewitching fragrance.

Lastly, I'd like to describe a bright crimson English Rose thriving in what had been a difficult area, 'L.D. Braithwaite'. This rose was fairly starved of regular water, being on the far corner of a bed filled with drought-tolerant plants, but has recovered well after two years of regular "overflow" watering by underground sprinkler pipes serving our apple orchard. The bush has the same general shape as 'Mary Rose' and does as well. Its flowers are cupped and fairly stuffed with a swirl of bright crimson petals. The photo to the left shows our 'L.D.Braithwaite' very late last season with one blossom in full bloom, another fading (in the foreground), and one hidden in the foliage that's still in bud.

All the roses I've mentioned above are winter hardy, and many winters they tough it out through our Cache Valley winters with no mulch or chipped bark to cover them. A heavy snow cover during the winter, of course, is always a boon, and we can usually count on a few good falls in Cache Valley during the winter.

More English Roses later. Until then,

Best wishes,

Joan

Joan Katherine Shaw
Late August 2003

Click for more on Roses:

A Miniature Rose Garden in Utah
Cascading Roses
Old White Roses
Prolific Climbing Roses for the North
Roses of the Middle East
Some Tough but Elegant Roses

Click to buy:

The Graham Stewart Thomas Rose Book

All photos by Joan Katherine Shaw

Clickable Links to browse for English Roses mentioned in this essay:

David Austin Roses Limited
Wayside Roses
White Flower Farms
Vintage Gardens
High Country Roses
Heirloom Roses
Antique Rose Emporium
Royall River Roses

A search for "David Austin Roses" or "English Roses" on the Internet with give you many additional sources

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