{"id":239,"date":"2011-01-10T06:17:06","date_gmt":"2011-01-10T14:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=239"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:57","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:57","slug":"royal-roses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/royal-roses\/","title":{"rendered":"Royal Roses"},"content":{"rendered":"

ROYAL ROSES<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The arrival of garden catalogs in the winter is like snowfall or popping popcorn.\u00a0 The process starts with a few flakes, kernels or catalogs and gradually accelerates until it eventually gets to the point where you have more than you know what to do with.\u00a0 This is going on right now in my household. \u00a0Before it is over, I’ll need a shovel to move the critical catalog mass.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The catalogs that most inspire me at the moment have pages of rose listings.\u00a0 Though I already have an unreasonable number of roses–at least in my husband’s view–I dream of more.\u00a0 After all, I only buy varieties that are good companions to other garden plants and everyone needs more good companions.\u00a0 As I write this, I am already feeling sorry for next spring’s lonely nasturtiums.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I especially love roses with historical associations.\u00a0 Two years ago I relocated a gargantuan clump of miscanthus grass to make room for that most romantic of all roses, the fragrant ‘Rosa Mundi’. The rose, a Gallica type, is red with white stripes and gorgeous in every way.\u00a0 It is a sport of the old, light red “Apothecary’s Rose,”\u009d which has been known and used for ornament, medicine and cosmetics since at least the mid thirteenth century.\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ‘Rosa Mundi’ was supposedly named after Rosamond Clifford, beloved mistress of English King Henry II and thorn in the side of his wife, the indomitable Eleanor of Aquitaine. Most sources dispute the legend that Eleanor had Rosamond poisoned.\u00a0 In fact, Rosamond retired to a convent two years after her liaison with Henry became public knowledge.\u00a0 The real cause of her death is not known.\u00a0 However, the legend of the poisoning has lived on, as has the legend that the rose was named after her.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thinking that I need some drama in the garden, I decided that I wanted to group roses named after both Henry and Eleanor near ‘Rosa Mundi’. I went to the very useful “Help Me Find Roses”\u009d website and discovered that while there are a number of roses with “Eleanor”\u009d in their names, there is no “Eleanor of Aquitaine.”\u009d\u00a0 There is, however, a groundcover rose named simply “Aquitaine.”\u009d \u00a0It grows no taller than 16 inches and can spread up to 2 feet, bearing lots of deep pink, single-flowered blooms. It seems unfair that ‘Aquitaine’ has to crawl around at the feet of the much taller ‘Rosa Mundi’, but there is no choice.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is no “Henry II”\u009d rose and the only rose that I could find with his family name, “Plantagenet,”\u009d in it, was an old French rose, ‘Henri Plantagenet Comte d’Anjou’.\u00a0 Since King Henry’s father, Geoffrey Plantagenet, was the Count of Anjou, perhaps the son was also Count of Anjou in addition to being King of England. Such things happened in those days when primary, secondary and tertiary titles abounded.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sadly, ‘Henri Plantagenet Comte d’Anjou’, a pink rose with purple highlights introduced in 1892, is no longer commercially available.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thinking that two roses named after such formidable women might just throttle each other in my garden, I decided that there had to be some way to introduce King Henry into their midst.\u00a0 Then I discovered an answer.\u00a0 “Plantagenet”\u009d comes from “Planta genista,”\u009d the name used at the time for scotch broom, a yellow flowering shrub that was common in Anjou. The Dukes of Anjou used Planta genista as an emblem, and King Henry’s father, Geoffrey, reportedly wore a sprig of the plant in his hat. If I were to plant a scotch broom behind my two royal ladies, it would complete the love triangle and keep things in balance. Broom flowers a bit earlier than the two roses, but the foliage would make a decent background.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is only one problem with this cozy domestic and horticultural set-up.\u00a0 Just like Henry II, Scotch broom has a tendency to become invasive.\u00a0 If I am going to have it in the garden, I will have to take care to grub out its many offspring.\u00a0 I expect some of King Henry’s rivals had similar thoughts.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With King Henry standing by in the form of “planta genista,”\u009d\u00a0 ‘Rosa mundi’ and ‘Aquitaine’ should get along much better than their twelfth century namesakes.\u00a0 There is also just a bit of justice.\u00a0 While ‘Rosa mundi’ is taller than ‘Aquitaine’, ‘Rosa mundi’ only blooms once a year. ‘Aquitaine’ is quite capable of repeat performances.\u00a0 Left to its own devices, the Scotch broom will probably reach out towards both plants, which is really quite appropriate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ROYAL ROSES \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The arrival of garden catalogs in the winter is like snowfall or popping popcorn.\u00a0 The process starts with a few flakes, kernels or catalogs and gradually accelerates until it eventually gets to the point where you have more than you know what to do with.\u00a0 This is going on right now in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1552,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/1552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}