Olivia Rose Austin (standard rose) - heavily scented and flowers all season

It has been a good season for roses this year. They were all later than usual, but now they have come out they are prolific. I have roses dotted all over the garden: planted in beds, in pots, as standards and trained against the wall. Most of my roses are from David Austin, and my favourites are the pale pink varieties, and scent is a must.

The David Austin story is an interesting one. He is single handedly responsible for breeding the new “English Rose” varieties, mixing the best attributes of old fashioned roses and the more modern hybrid tea roses. His legacy is the wide selection of beautiful, highly scented, repeat flowering roses that we have available in our garden centres today. His roses really do steal the show as they slowly unfurl and come out in flower - Lady Emma Hamilton (a Parkgate local in her time) displays this well.

I wandered around the garden this morning taking photographs of the roses in flower today. The standards are the stars of the show (Olivia Rose Austin and Wisley). The climbers are in their first season and still settling in, so a little less prolific (James Galway, Zephrine Drouhin, New Dawn, Mme Alfred Carriere, Lady of the Lake). The potted roses need regular feeding to keep them in flower throughout the season - most of my roses are repeat flowering varieties (English Miss, Gentle Hermione, Falstaff, Roald Dahl).

Zephrine Drouhin (climber)

Wisley (standard)

James Galway (climber)

New Dawn (climber)

Neighbour's rose

Olivia Rose Austin

Mme Alfred Carriere (climber)

Falstaff (bush)

A Whiter Shade of Pale (bush)

Gentle Hermione (bush)

The Lady of the Lake (climber)

English Miss (floribunda)

This year I am collecting the petals just before they drop, and laying them out on trays to dry for potpourri. It is an experiment - more on how that works out in a future blog. In the meantime I deadhead the flowers regularly and will be giving the plants a good feed in July to encourage another show of flowers later in the season.

Sunday morning postscript: I was wandering around my mother’s garden as well this morning, looking at her roses and her collection is a very different palette to mine. She also loves the David Austin roses and their scent, but hers are mainly on the white / yellow / orange spectrum, with an occasional foray into pink. It makes an interesting comparison.