It has been a long time coming, but someone has finally made a sensible pronouncement about roses.\u00a0 English garden writer, Charles Quest-Ritson, opines as follows in the December issue of Gardens Illustrated:<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cThe traditional wisdom is that you should spray your roses regularly with fungicides\u2014and feed them and prune them and make as much work for yourself as possible.\u00a0 In fact roses are extremely easy to grow and thrive upon neglect.\u201d<\/p>\n
I have ignored the \u201ctraditional wisdom\u201d for my entire gardening career, fertilizing my roses with neglect, while watching most of them grow strong and beautiful.\u00a0 Over the years, a few roses have taken it into their heads to decline and fade like fussy divas, but I refuse to feel guilty about them.\u00a0 Some probably arrived at my garden with rose virus, an all too-frequent malady in the horticultural world.\u00a0 Others were not right for the climate or the particular microclimate of my yard. Still others were simply unexceptional plants that I bought after being dazzled by bright blooms or enticing ad copy.<\/p>\n
Quest-Ritson\u2019s comment on \u201ctraditional wisdom\u201d was part of an article on rose varieties that perform strongly until the very end of the growing season.\u00a0 I was pleased to note that he included one of my favorites, \u2018Buff Beauty,\u2019 in his list of the top fifteen late bloomers.\u00a0 I have been smitten with \u2018Buff Beauty\u2019 since I first laid eyes on it long ago and my infatuation has only deepened with long acquaintance.<\/p>\n
\u2018Buff Beauty\u2019 is a shrub rose, introduced in England in 1939, as the winds of war blew through Europe. It is classified as a hybrid musk, a type developed by an Anglican clergyman, Joseph Pemberton, from the late eighteen eighties until his death in 1926.\u00a0 A prolific hybridizer, Pemberton aimed to produce hardy, free-flowering roses with good fragrance and a reblooming habit.\u00a0 His roses, with their long, arching canes and romantic clusters of softly colored blooms, recalled antique varieties.\u00a0 Pemberton\u2019s goal of combining the best of old and new reminds me of the aims of modern-day English breeder, David Austin, whose \u201cnew English roses\u201d have been successful worldwide.\u00a0 I believe that Austin may even have used some of the hybrid musks in his breeding program. Thanks to specialist nurseries modern rose enthusiasts can acquire as many Pemberton and Austin roses as their gardens can hold.<\/p>\n
\u201cBuff\u201d sounds strange on this side of the Atlantic and may make you think of either body building or an uninteresting shade of beige.\u00a0 Fortunately the \u201cbuff\u201d in this rose has nothing to do with beige and everything to do with mellow sunny tones.\u00a0 \u201cBuff Beauty\u2019s\u2019 apricot buds open into yellow flowers that glow golden at the centers.\u00a0 The blooms fade with age, like those of many hybrid musks, and the petals are nearly cream-colored by the time they drop.\u00a0 As Quest-Ritson points out in his article, the flowers\u2019 color intensity deepens as fall sets in.\u00a0 \u2018Buff Beauty\u2019 also has a pronounced old rose fragrance, another characteristic of the Pemberton varieties.\u00a0 Though the scent is not as potent as that of its sister hybrid musk, the pink-flowered \u2018Felicia,\u2019 it is strong enough to tickle your nose at a distance of several feet.<\/p>\n
My first requirement in garden roses is beauty, followed by hardiness and fragrance.\u00a0 Roses with a history speak to me and though the historical voice is inaudible to most garden visitors, I think it resonates subconsciously.\u00a0 \u2018Buff Beauty\u2019 has a history that goes back hundreds of years to China, pausing in early nineteenth century South Carolina, before proceeding to France and finally England.\u00a0 Its family tree features the beautiful and exceptionally hardy \u2018Reve D\u2019Or,\u2019 introduced in eighteen sixty-nine, a vigorous climber with similar golden apricot buds and clustered flowers.\u00a0 Joseph Pemberton was long dead by the time \u2019Buff Beauty\u2019 was introduced, but Pemberton\u2019s gardener, J.A. Bentall, carried on his work and launched new hybrid musks from his nursery.<\/p>\n
\u2018Buff Beauty\u2019 is a souvenir of nineteen thirty-nine, a watershed year in many ways.\u00a0 Hitler swept across Europe, Kate Smith first recorded \u201cGod Bless America\u201d and Hollywood produced both \u201cGone With the Wind\u201d and \u201cThe Wizard of Oz.\u201d\u00a0 In the world of roses, Bentall brought out \u2018Buff Beauty,\u2019 while French breeder Francis Meilland prepared to introduce a large-flowered, pinkish-yellow rose, named after his mother.\u00a0 The introduction was pre-empted by the fall of France, but the seedling rose bushes were spirited out of the country to the U.S., Italy and Germany.\u00a0 When Meilland\u2019s rose was finally introduced in 1945, it had been rechristened \u2018Peace\u2019 and swiftly achieved worldwide acclaim.<\/p>\n
\u2018Peace\u2019 became the epitome of rose beauty in the post-World War II era.\u00a0 It was my rose-loving father\u2019s favorite.\u00a0 I like it, but I find \u2018Buff Beauty\u2019 easier to live with.\u00a0 It ignores neglect with a great deal more equanimity than \u2018Peace\u2019 and never seems to get black spot, the b\u00eate noir of all yellow roses.\u00a0 \u2018Buff Beauty\u2019 has gone on now for three quarters of a century, exuding quiet radiance wherever it is planted.\u00a0 I expect that in one hundred years, rose lovers will still seek it out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has been a long time coming, but someone has finally made a sensible pronouncement about roses.\u00a0 English garden writer, Charles Quest-Ritson, opines as follows in the December issue of Gardens Illustrated: \u201cThe traditional wisdom is that you should spray your roses regularly with fungicides\u2014and feed them and prune them and make as much work … 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],"tags":[723,727,728,731,724,725,726,730,521,729],"class_list":["post-981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-buff-beauty","tag-david-austin","tag-easy-care-roses","tag-fragrant-roses","tag-hybrid-musk-roses","tag-peace-rose","tag-pemberton","tag-quest-ritson","tag-shrub-roses","tag-yellow-roses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981","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=981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":982,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions\/982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}