aboriginal to four continents and cultivated all over the world , roses are jimmy everywhere , with a farsighted history in many different culture . The garden rosebush grown at Alexandra Farms total trailing traditions and associations from their places of origin in Europe and Asia . Here are just a few of those stories .
English roses : old is newThe furor for breeding and cultivating roses exploded in the early nineteenth century across Europe — include England . By 1840 , one English rosarium harbour more than a thousand different rosaceous cultivars . But the English enchantment with rosiness go further back . To cite just one example , a bolshy and a white rose wine became the symbols of opposing junto in the fifteenth - century Wars of the Roses between the rival houses of Lancaster and York .
Even then , the passion for rose had start to motivate them across the globe , creating the rich variety that we enjoy today . The red rose of Lancaster was a variety of Rosa gallica , a mintage native to continental Europe and western Asia , while the ashen rose of York was plausibly R. alba — a rose that may have been convey to England by the ancient Romans .
Tess
In the late nineteenth one C — even after “ modern , ” hybrid tea roses began to prevail in many European gardens — the fullness and perfume of sure-enough garden roses witness a whiz in the celebrated English garden designer Gertrude Jekyll . Appreciation for vintage rose was also favour and promoted in the first one-half of the twentieth one C by the iconoclastic , movement - set florist shop Constance Spry .
Starting in the 1960s , the grounds was given new animation by David Austin , the breeder who singlehandedly revived and redefine the classical English rose : many - petalous and fragrant , in a chain of mountains of soft and complex hues . His first rise cultivar , insert in 1961 , was make after Constance Spry .
Today the David Austin collecting of wedding and event roses stock the English tradition over into Modern kind , bred to do as cut flowers . One of these , Tess ( Ausyacht ) , powerfully resembles an early gallica rise , Charles de Mills : both are deep reddened , ruffled rosettes that subject to discover a button center . And so , the past tense transforms into the future .
Vive la FranceAmong the great patrons of French garden rose was Empress Josephine , who retire after her divorcement from Napoleon Bonaparte to the graceful chateau of Malmaison , west of Paris , which swash blanket garden in the English style .
Yves
Josephine conduct a particular interest in the rose garden . Before this time , young rose mixed bag were the ware of prospect crossway ; Josephine ’s horticulturist , Andre Dupont , pioneered the revolutionary technique of hybridise roses through manipulate , artificial pollenation . The garden at Malmaison contained some 200 to 250 varieties let in gallicas , moss roses , damask rosebush , and centifolia or “ lettuce ” roses . Today ’s prestige breeder of French rose , like Meilland and Delbard , can claim genetic material from Josephine ’s assemblage .
The Romanticas , created by breeder Jacques Mouchotte of the house of Meilland , are a contrast of sybaritic rose with enchanting fragrances . The first miscellany was the peony - like , vivid pinkish Yves Piaget . Other French varieties in the Alexandra Farms collecting admit Amnesia , Sabrina , and Pink O’Hara .
Dutch treatsWhat gives a “ garden rose ” the overgenerous look we associate with that term today ? Above all , it ’s a multitude of petals , often break from within a bass , rounded cup . The pilot for that look is the “ cabbage ” rise : Rosa x centifolia . The name mean “ 100 petals . ”
You often see cabbage roses in Old Dutch Masters paintings from the seventeenth one C — and for ripe reasonableness . This case of blush wine appear in the Netherlands just at that time . It was a hybrid offshoot of the damask roses brought back to westerly Europe by Crusaders from the Near East in the late century .
Caramel Antike
Two beautiful examples of a rosebush in the cabbage dash from Alexandra Farms are Romantic Antike and Caramel Antike — a fond pink rose and her honey - colored sister with , literally , more than 100 petals each .
Under German skiesUsually , the varieties grown at Alexandra Farms are cautiously selected from the wide world of roses initially breed to grow in a garden . They are tested and civilise using exceptional techniques to ensure they perform well as cut blossom .
It ’s a unlike story with a syndicate of blush wine from Germany that provided some of Alexandra Farms ’ first successful varieties . These were specifically bred as cut - peak assortment that could be grow outdoors rather than in greenhouse — hence , they also had the shape and other characteristics of garden roses . From the renowned breeder Rosen Tantau , these varieties are known as Freiland roses , Freiland mean simply “ outdoors . ”
Alabaster
Alabaster , Ashley , Piano , and Pink Piano all belong to to this group . One is named for the imposing Habsburg rule ( and female parent of Marie Antoinette ) , Mariatheresia ; Baronesse is her darker babe .
The rising sunWesterners may connect Japan more readily with cherry flush or chrysanthemum . But Japan has aboriginal rose , as well , and a robust custom of hybridizing from the commencement of the Meiji period on .
Miyabi
The Japanese passion for rude lulu is well known , along with a penchant for scrupulous aid to contingent . In Japan , most flower farms are little , menage - hightail it affairs . It is not rare for raiser to discover or develop unique miscellanea , looking for a elbow room to stand out from the bunch .
In the ongoing search for raw garden prove varieties , it made sense for Alexandra Farms to turn to Japan . What the two Japanese collections have in common is an ultra - romantic look that is all the same graceful and subtle , ring advanced change on the Western garden - rose custom .
Princess Aiko
The eight - fellow member Princess collection ranges in color from bright peach to whiten to lustrous green . Three unlike stock breeder have unite to create the aggregation .
The Wabara line hails from Keiji Rose Farm on the shores of a with child lake northeast of Kyoto . Created by headmaster breeder Ken Kunieda , the line brings together novel combination of form and exquisite color . Wabara stand for “ harmoniousness rose . ” launch in 2007 and let go of internationally in 2017 , the recherche line of new pink wine in the honest-to-goodness mode proves that the allure of garden roses is global — and their variety inexhaustible .
