Rockefeller Rose Garden Showcases David Austin’s Latest

Posted in Gardens and Collections on June 10 2010, by Plant Talk

New Varieties Shine as English Grower and Garden Awarded this Weekend

Michael Marriott is Technical Director at David Austin® Roses, where he has worked for over 25 years.

The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden is quite simply one of the very best rose gardens in the world, and so I am always very keen to have our new varieties planted there. The curator of the rose garden, Peter Kukielski, has been very generous with his allocation of space to the David Austin English Roses, with long stretches of them in the beds on either side of the garden’s entrance.

Each year David Austin Roses introduces several new varieties, and, hopefully, Peter will find space for three or four plants of each variety. Our latest introductions are Princess Alexandra of Kent, Young Lycidas, Wisley 2008, Sir John Betjeman, and Munstead Wood.

Princess Alexandra of Kent (above, right) is a particularly impressive variety with very large, full-petaled flowers that are a warm, glowing pink. They have a wonderful tea fragrance, which develops into lemon and, later, hints of black currant. It makes an attractive bushy shrub of about four feet tall.

Young Lycidas also has large impressive flowers but they are a much deeper color, being a wonderful blend of deep magenta, pink, and red. The outer petals tend toward light-purple, although, interestingly, this is in contrast to the outside of the petals, which are quite silvery. The growth is bushy, the stems tending to arch in a most attractive way. There is delicious fragrance that starts as pure tea but then changes to a blend of tea and old rose, with intriguing hints of cedarwood.

Wisley 2008 (left) has smaller flowers, but they are perfectly formed, the petals arranged in a rosette. The color is absolutely pure soft-pink, the color fading perhaps just a little toward the outside. It is quite vigorous and very bushy and makes a very good landscaping rose. The fragrance is fresh and fruity with hints of raspberry and tea.

Sir John Betjeman is quite modern in appearance, the color being a bright deep-pink and intensifying with age. It flowers particularly freely and has a very bushy habit. The fragrance is light and rather “green.”

Munstead Wood is arguably the most obviously attractive of the group. The flowers are large and a deep-velvety crimson, with a strong old-rose fragrance with hints of blackberry, blueberry, and damson. It will stay a compact rose even in the warmer parts of the United States.

Please do visit the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden—it is superb. You can see the whole range of roses, and they are most beautifully looked after.

This weekend in New York, at its 10th annual conference, the Great Rosarians of the World™ will honor world-renowned hybridizer of English Roses David Austin and present its 2010 Rose Garden Hall of Fame Award to the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden. Come to the Botanical Garden on Saturday, June 12, for a lecture series on growing sustainable roses and for a reception in the Rose Garden. Through July 1, 2010, vote for the Rockefeller Rose Garden as American’s Best Garden.