It was roses, roses all the way
Emma Tennant
THE GRAHAM STUART THOMAS ROSE BOOK John Murray, £25, pp. 385 Graham Stuart Thomas, doyen of English gardeners, discovered his vocation when he was a small boy, and has now been following it for over 80 years. He says that alpine plants were his first love, but even as a schoolboy he was growing an interesting collection of roses, and I think he would agree that they became his grande passion. The catalogues Mr Stuart Thomas wrote when he and James Russell ran the Sun- ningdale Nurseries were much more than lists. They were soon expanded into three authoritative books: The Old Shnib Roses (1955), Shrub Roses of Today (1962), and Climbing Roses Old and New (1965). The Rose Book in turn grew out of the demand for all this knowledge to be brought up to date and condensed into one volume, which thus represents, with the same author's Perennial Garden Plants (1976) and Ornamental Shrubs, Climbers and Bamboos (1992), the distillation of a remarkably creative life's work.
The family history of the rose is so much more interesting than human genealogy, and is also much more complicated, there being no Almanach de Gotha to tell us who married whom, and when, and where, and what became of their progeny. And what a romantic, talented family is the genus Rosa: Gipsy Boy, Commandant Beaurepaire, General Kleber, Docteur Jamain, Cardinal de Richelieu, Lady Hillingdon and the Duchesse de Buccleugh [sic], Kron- prinzessin Viktoria von Preussen and the Queen of Denmark herself — all are cousins. The Rose Book gives the clearest possible picture of a tangled web of rela- tionships.
From the use of Rosa gallica as a reli- gious emblem by the Medes and Persians in the 12th century BC to the latest craze for planting multi-coloured hybrids on roundabouts, the history of the rose is a telling thread in the history of civilisation. Grown by the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, the rose was treasured through the Dark Ages in monastery horti inclusi, lovingly depicted in mediaeval illustrated manuscripts, and cultivated in the gardens of renaissance princes. One of Mr Thomas's illustrations shows a detail from a 15th-century Madonna and Child by Cosimo Roselli in which an angel offers a bowl of jasmine and Rosa moschata, depicted with unmistakable accuracy.
By the end of the 18th century 100 or so varieties were in cultivation. Many of them are familiar to us, thanks to the work of the Dutch flower painters and their successors like Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708-70), whose superb portraits of Rosa Mundi, York and Lancaster, Common Moss and Red Provence, among others, can be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Apart from two spectacular (and hard to grow) yellow species, R. hemis- phaerica and R. foetida, these Galicas, Damasks, Centifolias and Albas are all descended from a handful of species native to the Mediterranean or Near East, come in shades of white, pink, and purple, or combinations of those colours, and flower once only, at midsummer. A handful of Autumn Damasks were valued because they produced a few flowers at the end of summer.
The rosaceous equivalent of the Enlight- enment took place at about the same time as that philosophical revolution. China, home of so many spectacular plants, began to open its doors to the West. The Chinese had long been expert gardeners, and the earliest roses to reach Europe from that distant country were not species, but sophisticated hybrids developed by crossing Rosa chinensis with Rosa gigantea. They were found growing in gardens near the Treaty Ports. The four so-called stud chinas are Slater's Crimson China (introduced in 1792), Parson's Pink China (1793), Hume's Blush Tea-Scented China (1809) and Park's Yellow Tea-Scented China (1824). From these four varieties all our modern, brightly-coloured, repeat-flowering roses are derived.
Since then roses have, as Mr Stuart Thomas says, been very much in the hands of nurserymen. Almost at once, hybridisa- tion on a massive scale began, and the desperate search for novelty continues to this day. Mr Stuart Thomas says, rightly, that comparisons between old-fashioned and modern roses are odious. He is admirably broad-minded and can even find a place in his planting schemes for the brightest scarlet and orange varieties. But for those who like to grow a little history and romance the older roses have the advantage. Take Slater's Crimson China itself. The first true vivid crimson rose to reach the West, it was lost for many years, found in a garden in Bermuda and has now been re- introduced. Hume's Blush Tea-Scented China was introduced to England when the Napoleonic war was raging, but nonethe- less, the British and French Admiralties made special arrangements to ensure its safe transit to the Empress Josephine's garden at Malmaison. It, too, became extinct in Europe and was subsequently re- discovered in the West Indies. If I had a large conservatory I would grow the tender Fortune's Double Yellow, which Was already an old garden plant when the great Scottish explorer found it growing in 'a rich Mandarin's garden at Ningpo' in 1844' Then there are the Bourbon roses, se called because their race arose from chance seedling found on the Ile de Bourbon (now Reunion) near Mauritius. It was a cross between the Pink Autumn, Damask and Parson's Pink China, both 01 which were used as hedging plants on the island. Mr Thomas's own experience shows that it is not necessary to travel far to make exciting discoveries. Along with a handful of other enthusiasts he rescued many goe''' but neglected roses in the Thirties an Forties. He must be amused and delighted c that they are now, once again, the height el', fashion. More recently, as a result 0,." diligent research, he found the true Rosa moschata, which was thought to be extinct, growing on the north wall of a house 1° Enfield of all places. Thomas This book is Graham Stuart Thole ,.e chef d'oeuvre. It is an inspiration to to gardener, the artist, the traveller and ti_lf historian. I hope it will be under yaw Christmas tree.
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