Gardener and Photographer with a love of Roses and a magpie-eye for all things Horticultural
June 2018 visiting Mottisfont with a fellow rose-lover. A day of laughter and fun. Overblown, blowsy, beautiful, fragrant, lush, a little ragged, absolutely in need of some serious dead-heading - but equally glamorous and hopelessly romantic, there are no rose gardens quite like Mottisfont. Soulful, they inhabit the walled gardens of this ancient priory, clambering…
Continue reading ➞ Mottisfont Rose Gardens, June 2018
My fifteen favourite roses
Overblown, blowsy, beautiful, fragrant, lush, a little ragged, absolutely in need of some serious dead-heading - but equally glamorous and hopelessly romantic, there are no rose gardens quite like Mottisfont. Soulful, they inhabit the walled gardens of this ancient priory, clambering through the many venerable apple and pear tress, hopelessly constrained by box or lavender,…
Continue reading ➞ Mottisfont Rose Gardens
Set by the banks of the crystal River Test, cutting through the chalk downland, sits Mottisfont Priory, dating to the 13th Century and with a colourful history right up to the 20th Century with Maud and Gilbert Russell bringing life again to the old house and the National Trust subsequently taking the House and Gardens…
This long pergola with brick pillars and timber beams is clothed with some beautifully trained rambling and climbing roses. Beautiful monsters like Rosa filipes Kiftsgate ought to swamp the entire structure and much else besides but with the love and careful treatment these specimens are given, a multitude of flowers hug the cross beams and…
A pilgrimage to these gardens, for which, so far as the roses are concerned, we have Graham Stuart Thomas to thank principally and for the last 40+ years, the National Trust for preserving and enhancing his original collection of Old Roses. Mottisfont holds the National Collection of Shrub Roses. I met Jonny Bass, the head…
Continue reading ➞ A return to Mottisfont Abbey; an Old Rose Pilgrimage
Two pieces here, very wordy (though by no means not all my words) first from the RHS Magazine, followed by a wander through their Pruning and Training Book. Quite a lot that you might need to know about pruning summer-flowering and repeat-flowering Old Roses, what I still call Hybrid Teas and Floribunda roses, Climbers and…
Continue reading ➞ Rose Pruning Masterclass – with a little help from my friends….
Pat Austin (the orange) and Princess Anne (above, in shades of pinky-purple) - both from David Austin and looking, in every bed, very happy and healthy. Cerise Bouquet, below The white hydrangea-like heads of shrub rose, Sally Holmes Reine des Violettes (above and below) Morning Mist, from David Austin roses, always impossibly healthy. A big…
Spong One of the most famous sports of Rosa x centifolia, originating in 1805, probably in England. It will reach 4ft (1.2m), bears typically rounded leaves of its parent and neat flowers about twice the size of De Meaux (also a sport of Rosa x centifolia), with the same good fragrance. Its failing is that…
Continue reading ➞ The Mottisfont Pictorial Rose Catalogue continues with another update…
The Teddington Gardener 