Greetings everyone and a warm welcome to all my new subscribers.
This month our thoughts are with the people, the wildlife and livestock, and the farms and gardens within the flood affected areas of the country.
Hints of colour in leaves and a crispness in the air lets us know Autumn is here, whilst my friends in the Northern hemisphere are celebrating the arrival of Spring.
In this edition we talk striped roses old and new, visit a sustainable rose garden, learn the three P’s of beneficial insects, see what happens in the first three years of a new rose garden, I introduce another talented painter of roses and send you some Easter sunshine.
I hope you enjoy this ramble in the garden with me.
When we see a striped rose we might be forgiven for thinking that it is a new-fangled creation from the modern rose breeders, but striped roses have, in fact, been around for a long time, a very long time. Rosa gallica versicolor (picture above in a painting by Redoute) also known as Rosa Mundi, named after Fair Rosamund the mistress of King Henry II, is recognised as the oldest striped rose, originating from before 1581. This
rose which tolerates some shade has a strong fragrance and can be used for a hedge, suckering on its own roots.
Variegata di Bologna (above) is a fragrant old Bourbon rose bred by Massimilano Lodi in Italy before 1909. It is a blend of purple red and white.
A more modern but nonetheless striking striped rose is Scentimental bred before 1996 by Tom Carruth in the USA. It has a mild to strong, damask, rose, spice fragrance.
La Fillette bred by Ruth and Richard Walsh before 2011 is an Australian bred striped roses which has the striped rose, Fourth of July, in its pedigree.
It is hard to talk about striped roses without mentioning the Delbard Painter’s series. Pictured above is Camille Pissarro™ bred by Delbard’s of France in 1996 and it has a mild apple rose fragrance. Other roses in this series are Alfred Sisley™ Claude Monet™ Edgar Degas™ Grimaldi™ Henri Matisse™ Maurice Utrillo™ and Paul Cézanne™.
A Sustainable Rose Garden
This month’s garden visit is to the rose garden at the Royal Botanic Garden of Ontario. Designed by Peter E Kukielski, author of Roses Without Chemicals: 150 Disease-Free Varieties That Will Change the Way You Grow Roses, this
garden is based upon sustainability principles including creating a healthy eco system, companion planting, trickle irrigation for deep root development combined with mulching, and selection of disease resistant varieties.
Peter’s definition of a modern rose garden is 'not a monoculture, but a mixed border.’ The garden consists of 3,000 roses and 18,000 perennials chosen as insect-attracting companions.
The beneficial insects play various roles as Pollinators, Predators and Parasites. Bees are the most well known pollinators, but there are many others too.
The larvae of ladybirds (pictured below) are voracious predators who feast on large amounts of aphids.
And we can thank the parasitic wasps who lay their eggs in aphids, stopping them in their tracks. In the picture above you can see the round whole cut into a mummified aphid where a wasp has hatched out.
The rose garden at the Royal Botanical Garden of Ontario is a very new garden replacing the 50 year old Centennial Rose Garden. When roses are first planted into a garden it takes them around three years to first get established. This process can be described as Sleep, Creep and Leap where in the first year the plants go slow taking time to recover from transplant shock, in the second year
a growth phase occurs, and in the third year the roses are blooming abundantly.
You can watch the video about the Ontario garden and the philosophy behind it here.
Anna Peters (1843-1926) was a German painter of florals and landscapes. Anna, who never married, was the first woman in Germany to make a living from selling her paintings. She won many medals for her work and exhibited regularly in Berlin, Munich, Dresden and Vienna. The Anna-Peters Road in Stuttgart is named after her.
Anna's sister, Pietronella, also painted as you can see in this portrait of Anna and her dog (below).
And finally a little bit of Easter sunshine. I painted this sunny yellow rose quite a few years ago on an Easter weekend. I remember I made good progress on the painting because there was plenty of sunshine which meant the light was good coming in my studio window. I had photographed the rose at the Hunter Valley Gardens but I hadn't been able to find the name plate of it so I decided to call the painting Easter
Sunshine. A few weeks after that Easter I received an email from one of the gardeners who was searching for the name for me. 'I have found the name of your rose, it's Gold Bunny!'
Gold Bunny is a floribunda rose which was bred by Marie-Louise Meilland in France before 1977, and it was given the name Gold Badge. When the rose was introduced into Australia in 1981 it was called Gold Bunny.
Wishing all my readers a Happy Easter and plenty of sunshine.
Until next month,
Love and roses,
Michelle
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My Novel: Rose Garden Reverie
A story of transformation set in a rose garden with rose care tips throughout the seasons.
The soft cover book is 110 pages long and costs $20 (Australian Dollars) per copy via the button below with free shipping worldwide.
Also available from online book sellers.
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May the beauty of nature inspire you everyday
Michelle Endersby Art
www.michelleendersbyart.com
phone: 0400 473 173
[email protected]
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