 |
| Janet Wood (holding Rosa 'Dainty Bess') and Dennis Yeomans |
My Rosemary and I have kept ourselves sane these days of
quarantine by working (piddling?) in our deck garden and in the back lane where
we have managed to plant 9 roses in front of our garage door. The garage is not
a garage anymore but my office and tiny photo studio.
It is impossible to look at most of our plants without me
seeing a face in them. Many of my hostas have been hybridized by gardeners I
met in past American Hosta Society Conventions that Rosemary and I used to
attend.
It is the same with roses particularly the ones that I
discovered in other local rosarians’ gardens.
A week back the first rose in our garden was this long
named one Rosa sericea ssp.omiensis f. ptercantha. But a close second was a little patio rose called Rosa 'Emily Louise.'
 |
| Rosa 'Emily Louise' 4 May 2020 |
It was years ago that I saw this miniature rose that
almost does not look like a rose in Janet Wood’s (Former president of the
Vancouver Rose Society who died some years ago) garden. I had to have it so she
ordered it for us. Alas it died a year ago and my friend, Portland baroque
bassist Curtis Daily brought us one hidden in his Prius.
One rose that gave up the ghost is the single tea rose,
'Mrs. Oakley Fisher'. Fortunately at the very least I have the record of this
lovely photograph of our granddaughter Rebecca wearing one.
 |
| Rebecca Stewart & Rosa 'Mrs. Oakley Fisher' |
When I first saw it the entrance of Wood’s garden I was
dazzled. She told me what it was. I immediately countered with , “I am going to
go home and make myself a large mug of Earl Grey tea and I will toast some
bread and serve it with unsalted butter and apricot jam.” And I did. Of course,
in this day and age, the possibility of securing another Mrs. Oakley Fisher is
almost a tough impossibility.
When we moved from our large Kerrisdale garden four years
ago I rented a big van and took most of my Gallicas and a large Rosa glauca to
my eldest daughter’s property in Lillooet. The Gallicas have prospered but the
glaucas have multiplied like there is no tomorrow. Why did I ever purchase that
original glauca? It is because I saw it as a tree on Dennis Yeomans’s garden.
We now have a glauca in our garden with a little story
behind it. Quite a few years ago my friend Alleyne Cook (the man who planted
all those rhododendrons in Stanley Park) and I visited his friend Bill Forsythe
(his former boss at the Park’s Board) who had a terrific and very large garden
in Surrey with all sorts of old roses. I spotted a glauca with unusually large
flowers and asked. Forsythe answered, “It is a cross between Rosa 'Dainty Maid' (the
rose that David Austin used to mate with Belle Isis to make his first English
Rose, Rosa 'Constance Spry') and glauca. He then gave a small plant to Cook, to my
chagrin. I was not able to ever get an answer from Cook, before he died last year, as to what had happened
to his plant.
Last year at a visit to Free Spirit Nursery in Langley
Rosemary spotted a plant called Rosa ‘Bill’s
Rose’. How the folks at Free Spirit got it we don’t know. Perhaps it was
through Christine Allen who used to provide Free Spirit with roses. When I told
the Free Spirit folks the story of Bill’s Rose I received a call from Allen who
has now been able to register the rose.
And all the above cements why sometimes when I look at
some of Rosemary’s perennials I see no faces of anybody and unlike many roses there
is no story behind them.
Luckily our garden has many faces and of that I am
thankful.
 |
| Rosa complicata |
And one very large plant (almost a tree) is Rosa complicata. Many years ago Alleyne Cook came to my garden with a small rose in a pot. He told me, almost rudely, "If you are going to have roses in the garden you are going to have to have this one." It traveled well to our new Kits garden and it loves to be where it is.