A hedge of historical roses

Since the moment when I saw the first historical rose, I have been overwhelmed by their beauty. Hungarian nurseries, of course, have never even heard of them.

The greatest benefit of the accession of Hungary to the European Union was to me that since then we have been able to import plants without any restriction. And when God gives a pot, then He also gives the rabbit to be cooked in it. Soon after the accession I found the nursery of Peter Beales in England which has, I guess, the largest assortment of historical roses in all the world, and the oldest German rose nursery, Rosen von Schultheis, which has an especially large collection of the same roses.

My only problem left was where to plant these roses. They usually only bloom two or three weeks at the beginning of the summer. Some of them produce rose-hips, but most of them – and just those with the most exciting wine-colored flowers – do not, and thus in the rest of the year they are not that beautiful. After long considerations I have invented Spanish wax. I have not planted them in the garden, but – encouraged by what I had read about their resistant nature – on the street, along our fence. (Much later I discovered that this is how they were traditionally treated: they were always planted in a separate part in the garden.)

In this year our hedge of historical roses already bloomed in full glamor.

Paeonia 'Kokuryunishiki'

It arrived in this spring from the Staudengärnerei Gräfin von Zeppelin. A Japanese paeonia hybrid. Its Japanese origin is important, because the Chinese breeds – which are sold everywhere, often for extremely high price – are not frost-resistant, while the Japanese ones are. However, they are rarely found in Hungary. This German nursery offers a large number of Japanese hybrids that are surely frost-resistant even at us. They send beautiful and strong plants. This one, for example, already bloomed in the year when I received it. This is how it looked in this year. I guess now I managed to make a photo that shows its real color.

The Japanese tea garden

This is one of my favorite sitting places. Originally we wanted to place a garden seat here, but I could not wait until it would be prepared. I brought there two granite cubes that were left after the construction of the house, and on the top of them a plank, also a remainder of the construction. The result was forceful: we got a Japanese-style bench. I have immediately developed it further, adding one more cube and another plank, thus creating a corner seat. Later, when Tamás had time to polish the planks, I spread a mat varnish over it – but it in fact it had been beautiful even without that. We have brought an about 60 cm large white quarry stone with one flat side and placed it in front of the seat as a tea table.

The whole composition has a Japanese feeling while it also fits well in its not strictly Japanese surrounding. Nevertheless, for the sake of boasting off, we call it Japanese tea garden.

I sit a lot here, because I like very much the cool quiet of this place. This is what I see from here in the middle of April: