{"id":3571,"date":"2021-12-20T08:02:38","date_gmt":"2021-12-20T16:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=3571"},"modified":"2021-12-20T08:02:38","modified_gmt":"2021-12-20T16:02:38","slug":"a-christmas-rose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/a-christmas-rose\/","title":{"rendered":"A Christmas Rose"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rose<\/a>In late December many of us sing the old carol, \u201cLo How a Rose Ere Blooming,\u201d but we in cold winter climates do not expect to see roses blooming in our gardens.\u00a0 Sometimes, though, there are exceptions.\u00a0 We are now heading towards late December and a rose in my garden pushed out an unexpected blossom last week.\u00a0 The weather is relatively balmy at this moment, but cold snaps earlier in the fall were enough to halt rose production elsewhere in the garden.\u00a0 The persistent rose is \u2018Brother Cadfael\u2019, a David Austin \u201cEnglish Rose\u201d, and I think it just refuses to give up.<\/p>\n

\u2018Brother Cadfael\u2019 was bred in England by pioneering hybridizer David Austin, whose lifelong goal was to produce garden roses that combined old-fashioned looks and fragrance with a wider range of colors and a reliable reblooming habit.\u00a0 To accomplish this he crossed older varieties with newer ones until he achieved his desired results.\u00a0 \u2018Brother Cadfael\u2019 was the offspring of a cross between an unnamed Austin seedling and an earlier Austin variety, apricot-colored \u2018Charles Austin\u2019.\u00a0 The cross resulted in a beautiful, sometimes lanky shrub with large, pink blooms.\u00a0 When fully open, the many petals form an old-fashioned cupped shape.\u00a0 \u201cPink\u201d is actually an inadequate description, because the strongly scented flowers shade ever so slightly to lavender.\u00a0 The end result is a stunning rose that reblooms freely throughout the growing season and sometimes, as in the case of my plant, beyond the growing season.<\/p>\n

\u2018Brother Cadfael\u2019 was named in honor of a fictional character created by author and historian Edith Pargeter, writing under the name \u201cEllis Peters\u201d.\u00a0 Set in the twelfth century, the Cadfael books are mysteries focused on Brother Cadfael, a Welsh-born former Crusader who retired from combat to become a Benedictine monk.\u00a0 Resident at the Abbey Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, located in Shrewsbury in western England, Cadfael served as herbarian and apothecary, cultivating medicinal herbs and concocting healing potions from them.\u00a0 He also concocted solutions to murders that seemed to beset the Abbey with amazing regularity through the mystery series.\u00a0 The mysteries are sometimes formulaic, but the historical details, character development and herbal lore make them unique.\u00a0 Despite the murders and the mayhem that engulfed England in the twelfth century, the Cadfael books are rather gentle.\u00a0 The detective, an excellent observer of human nature, is more soft than hard-boiled<\/p>\n

The Abbey was real and its ruins still stand in Shrewsbury, which is not far from the late David Austin\u2019s home base in Shropshire.\u00a0 Edith Pargeter was devoted to the upkeep and care of the site.\u00a0 David Austin\u2019s often named his varieties for literary or historical figures and his regard for the location, author and character resulted in the christening of the distinctive rose.\u00a0 English actor Derek Jacobi, who played Cadfael in film adaptions, reportedly grows the Cadfael rose in his garden.<\/p>\n

In the gardening world and the world at large, everything eventually comes full circle. Just as Edith Pargeter reached back in time to create Cadfael, David Austin reached back in rose history to create the \u2018Cadfael\u2019 rose.\u00a0 One of \u2018Cadfael\u2019s\u2019 ancestors\u2014the equivalent of a rose great-grandfather\u2014was a French variety, \u2018Duchesse de Montebello\u2019, introduced in 1824.\u00a0 \u2018Duchesse\u2019 is classified as a hybrid Gallica rose, meaning that it was descended from a distinct species, Rosa gallica.\u00a0 Though the name \u201cgallica\u201d means \u201cFrench\u201d, the species itself was cultivated as far back as Greek and Roman times, and is also known as \u201cthe apothecary rose\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 The rose may have travelled to Europe with conquering Roman legions, or it may have arrived slightly later with returning Crusaders.\u00a0 In any event, the fictional Cadfael knew and used it in his apothecary duties.\u00a0 Roses are mentioned many times in the mystery series, as the real Cadfaels of the time included rose petals, rose oil and other rose products in all kinds of internal and external remedies.<\/p>\n

The highly scented gallicas also made things smell better at a time when foul odors of varying intensity were major components of everyday life.<\/p>\n

Edith Pargeter died in 1995 and David Austin left the world in 2018, but Brother Cadfael lives on amid garden greenery and the dust of used bookstores.\u00a0 At a moment when it seems as if darkness is ascendant, I like the fact that Cadfael\u2019s rosy namesake also lives long and blooms abundantly in the intermittent sunshine of my small corner of the horticultural world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In late December many of us sing the old carol, \u201cLo How a Rose Ere Blooming,\u201d but we in cold winter climates do not expect to see roses blooming in our gardens.\u00a0 Sometimes, though, there are exceptions.\u00a0 We are now heading towards late December and a rose in my garden pushed out an unexpected blossom … 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":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[2632,727,2634,1637,922,859,2633,11],"class_list":["post-3571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-brother-cadfael-rose","tag-david-austin","tag-edith-pargeter","tag-ellis-peters","tag-english-roses","tag-heirloom-roses","tag-rosa-gallica","tag-roses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3571","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=3571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3573,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3571\/revisions\/3573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}