The Scent of Roses

With the prospect of a few days holiday to spend in the garden I decided to make my annual trip to a local rose nursery.  The plant centre is in the midst of the Shropshire countryside, tucked away down country lanes.  I've had quite a number of roses from there over the years and always take visiting friends for a trip out and a cup of tea and a scone from their tearoom.  Everyone loves it whether they are gardeners or not - who wouldn't love the site of hundreds of roses in bloom!

All the roses I have had from Country Garden Roses have faired well, including a climbing Iceberg and Rosa Evening Light planted on the pergola only last year. 

Lush growth of Iceberg

Evening Light

On this trip I came home with four roses: Boy, Oh Boy - a lovely red ground cover rose; Erfurt - a beautifully scented, deep pink shrub rose; Flower Carpet White - I have two other flower carpet roses, pink and coral and both are such easy roses to care for and flower profusely throughout the summer; Kiftsgate - a very large rambling white rose, this will go into the bottom hedge to scramle through alongside the wild dogroses - at least that's the theory!

I'm fortunate to live close enough to the nursery to visit in person, although they do a mail order service the roses are a lot dearer this way and despite the very informative website with lovely photographs you don't get to try the scent.  For me a rose isn't a rose without a scent. 

It was unbelievably difficult to choose from the miriad of plants available and to be honest I'm amazed that I managed to restrict myself to only four.  But there's always next year's trip to look forward to, unless of course I have any visiting friends who'd like to see and smell the lovely display during the summer!