The visit of the Hungarian Rose Society

Last Sunday the Hungarian Rose Society visited our garden. After my spring lecture they told they would like to see my roses, too. We organized the visit for now, the blooming of the roses. For those rose friends who are not yet members of the Rose Society, here I offer a virtual guide.

The first rose is 'Bonica'. I think this is one of the best roses on the market today. Healthy, nice even on poor soil and in semi-shade, very cold-tolerant (Z4), blooming from early June until the first frosts. It is also available in Hungary, the Nursery of Alsótekeres sells it for a few euros. I would like to specifically draw the attention of gardening shops to order from it, so that this excellent rose would spread at us as well.

This is how the big rose garden looks from afar. I usually see this view, from the place where I used to have tea in the morning.

English roses in semi-shade. To the left: 'Sharifa Asma', 'Heather Austin' and 'The Dark Lady'; to the right, one of my favorites, 'Cottage Rose' (which, according to Help Me Find, is not just my favorite).

To the left, a Canadian rose, 'Martin Frobisher', really shade and cold-tolerant, with repeated blooming, the only problem is that in the rain its flowers turn brown. The high pink one next to it is 'Delicata', one of the earliest blooming roses. They usually tell it one or one and half meter high, but here it is one and half with the strongest pruning, without that it would be probably at least two meters. Next to it, 'A Shropshire Lad' and 'Lucetta' which, unfortunately, blossom only twice a year here in semi-shade.

The garden path from the house to the garden leads through the roses. Our first roses in the garden were planted in the right-side part of the picture: these were brought from England back in 1997.

Another favorite of mine, 'John Clare'. The cream-colored one behind it is 'Comtes des Champagne', while the back one the beautiful 'Jubilee Celebration'.

'Cottage Rose' from the other side, behind it a 'Zaiga', an excellent Latvian, and 'William Baffin', a good Canadian rose. You should pay attention to these Latvian Rugosas and Canadian roses, they are really beautiful and cold-resistant.

Finally, once more 'Sharifa Asma', 'Heather Austin' and 'Dark Lady', with Noble Anthony behind them. The row is closed in the spice garden by a Delphinium, Karl Foester’s excellent 'Finstneraarhorn'. (After taking the photos, I cut it back, and now it is getting dry in the bathroom so that in the autumn it could be a main character of the large dry autumn bouquet.)

Cottage Rose

David Austin has found a perfectly fitting name to this rose, which is the very mirror of the country cottage. A classical pink rose with pleasant smell, and with a nice, loose bush form that stands out even among the roses of Austin. It blooms all over the summer, and it is continuously beautiful. If you have place only for one or two roses, you are advised to choose it.

type: English rose (David Austin 1991)

height: 90-150 cm - At us always 120-150 cm.
width: 75-90 cm - At us always 120-150 cm.
tolerance of cold: Z5b (to -26 ºC) At us (Z5a, to -29 ºC) it is completely frost-resistant.
blooming: several times - At us it continuously blooms even in spots of strong part-shadow.

The data of the description come from Help Me Find where you can also see further pictures.

Bonica

Yellow flower bed

This is the place for most of the yellow roses.

And this is the period of rose flowering. They started at the beginning of June, and they continue it with various intensity until the frosts.

Spring and early summer blue, white and pink perennials have already ceased flowering, while the yellow composition will be really spectacular only from the beginning of July.

However, some early ones like this daylily have already opened the yellow season.

Until they are followed by the rest, this part is made exciting by the contrast of large-leaved hostas and filigran grasses.

Saturday morning

Pentecost

The large rose bed

The last snow

It is absolutely not sure that this will be the last one, but I would like very much if it were so.

There were some years when on March 21th there was more than twenty centimeter of snow in the garden.

Nevertheless I hope that in this year spring will come already in February. It did happen sometimes. To the family budget it would do good anyway.

The meteorology site MetNet - the most reliable one in Hungary, to my experience - does promise a budged-friendly weather for the next week.

Inspired by this outlook, I decided to start to put the garden in order in the next year. I will cut back dry grass and perennials.

So, if God helps, these are the last photos of grass with snow in this year.

This morning a thin layer of snow greeted us as we looked out of the window.

By now it has disappeared. But it was beautiful.

A blessed, beautiful week to everyone!

Rose pages

Now as I finally don’t have to weed, there is time to browse the pages of gardening. Let us begin with roses.

Rosenmeile: The page of Christine Meile, rose gardener and photographer (as well as a dog fan). Wonderful and rich in information.

Helpmefind: Everything that is rose. They publish several photos of each plant (and eventually links to gardens where the respective rose can be found), give very precise data about their height and width, and often also about their tolerance of shade. They provide detailed information about special sorts like the completely cold hardy Canadian roses which had been developed in the last decades. This is the site I use the most about roses.

RogersRoses: The web version of that fabulous English book whose illustrations incited us ten years ago to establish our rose garden and that I have been regularly browsing ever since. The internet version has a very good search function.

EveryRose: One of the largest rose databases with an advanced search function. Its composite searches were a great help to me as a beginner.

RoseFile: Another rose database with many good images and information, and with a special page on roses for cold climate.

JustOurPictures: The most beautiful rose photos I have ever seen.

David Austin Roses: In my opinion the most beautiful roses of the world. They look as marvelous as historical roses, but in contrast to them they are remontant. They have fantastic colors, some of them smells wonderfully, and some are extremely sturdy. In my experience, however, we in Central Europe should better import his roses from more nearby regions, Germany or Austria, because they are stronger and develop better at us.

Peter Beales Roses: The other world famous British rose nursery alongside with Austin’s. They sell more than 1300 classical roses, and have a quite fantastic offer concerning wild roses and historical roses. The page has a very good advanced search function that also includes the roses’ demand of light and soil, an information otherwise hard to obtain. (Nevertheless, take with caution the periods of blooming reported by them.) Their roses curiously tolerate better the change of climate between Britain and Hungary than those of Austin.

Rosen von Schultheis: The doyen of German rose nurseries with a large offer and good quality. It sells a lot of English roses, and also a number of such specialties like the Canadian and Estonian hybrids which are surely cold hardy at us.