Two short videos featuring the roses within the Cutting Garden at Petersham Nurseries – Abraham Darby, The Alnwick Rose, Constance Spry, Veilchenblau, Boscobel, Eden Rose/Pierre de Ronsard, Reine des Violettes, Paul’s Scarlet, Gertrude Jekyll, A Shropshire Lad, Falstaff, Rosa banksiae …
These last two are of the umbrella-frame-trained Rosa multiflora Platyphylla, or Seven Sisters. The fragrance, from such a distance, is superb. It suffered a bashing in the rain but had perked up by the evening. A fabulous old rose (and trained by me!).
Finally, what we think of as Louisa Stone, very like Madame Alfred Carriere, but not supposed to be as big and vigorous as this. I spoke with the folk on the Harkness Roses stand at RHS Chelsea Flower Show and will email them a photo to see if they can confirm its identity. We can’t find it for sale and would be lovely if it was perhaps another variety, one that we could!
The Teddington Gardener 
Gorgeous! I was at RHS Chelsea last Friday; all the roses (and the foxgloves everywhere!) were magnificent. The roses in the parks I visited earlier in the week were covered with buds but mostly not in bloom yet, with some exceptions like a couple of huge beds of ‘Olivia Rose Austin’ at Kew, which were in full bloom. I’m glad the storms held off until after the flower show!