HONORINE de Brebant, Variegate de Bologna, Tuscany Superb, La France, Queen of Denmark, the rose garden is a European roll call right now as the old roses spill out in generous and rich profusion with heavy, nostalgic scents which fill the air intoxicatingly.
For many gardens this is the high point of summer - an intense few weeks of bliss with flowers varying from blowzy cabbages to disarmingly simple, finepetalled compositions of great sophistication. Because their season is ephemeral we can love them all the more. Their coming fills us with anticipation and their passing leaves sweet memories and a resolution to be more attentive and diligent in their care.
That so many old roses survived is a happy chance and we may thank, indirectly, one ambitious European who sought to make us all one. My fellow townsan, Arthur Wellesley, and many others took a different view and the Napoleonic ambition to unite all Europe under French rule perished at Waterloo.
Before that, the Empress Josephine had been relegated to Malmaison when Napoleon sought a wife to bear him an heir. Josephine turned to her garden and especially to her roses. From all over Europe and further afield plants were gathered and many neglected and all forgotten roses were made fashionable again. The cult spread and breeders took up the challenge, producing a great line of worthy garden plants which eventually led to the introduction of the hybrid teas, the floribundas and the modern patio roses.
You could put it all down to that European ambition of 200 years ago. Without Josephine and her garden at Malmaison there would have been no great fashion for roses and the history of roses would have gone in a different direction.
Among the causes she inspired and encouraged was the recording of roses in cultivation. The most gifted botanical artist was at hand to create Les Roses, the extravagant, illustrated production which still brings these early 19th century treasures to life. Pierre Joseph Redoute, the artist, was assisted by many others, principally the author of the text, Claude Antoine Thory. Under the patronage of Josephine, the most beautiful rose book the world has ever known came into being. The empress died in 1814 but the train which she set in motion continued and the first publication be an in 1817 with exquisite, coloured plates, depicting the roses Redoute had painted in her garden.
Les Roses spread the word and the desire to possess and cultivate these flowers. Countless editions and abridgments have continued up to the present as the development and breeding of roses has moved and progressed far beyond anything that the empress or Redoute would have recognised.
One rose in particular commemorates her garden, Souvenir de la Malmaison. She did not see it as it was only introduced in 1843. A climbing form was introduced 50 years later and that is she version most usually seen today. This rose likes good weather and the full quartered flowers are delicately scented, opening flesh pink and fading to a creamy white. In the climbing form it is a vigorous plant, up to 12 feet in height and spread. Sensuous and beautiful in flower, blooms are produced in profusion around mid summer and continuing into autumn.
A single flowered sport of the non climbing form occurred in St Annes, Lady Ardilaun's garden in Clontarf, early this century. A delightful flower of simple sophistication, it forms a nice Irish link with a great European enterprise. It deserves to be better known than it is.