Our Favourite David Austin Roses for the Cottage Garden
All photographs in this post were taken by me in our own garden.
There is something quintessentially English about roses. Sweet-perfumed roses rambling along borders and climbing over arches seem to capture the timeless beauty of the English cottage garden. Our 1950s semi-detached house is a far cry from anything resembling a cottage, but nevertheless, in our tiny, oddly-shaped garden, our growing collection of beautiful David Austin Roses seem to thrive. Proof that you can evoke the sense of the cottage garden wherever you live.
Each rose has its own personality - not just in its colour and scent - but in its perfume and the way it embraces all the other plants around it. From mid-May, sometimes until November, our garden is filled with glorious blooms which bring us all such joy.
Gardening - and growing roses is no exception - can seem daunting and is easily over-complicated, yet our roses seem to thrive on very little attention, other than a late-autumn and late-winter pruning. Despite what must seem to many as woeful neglect, they seem to reappear each year, often even more sumptuous than the year before.
David Austin have been breeding roses on their family farm in Shropshire since 1961. We can only begin to imagine the care, patience, and craft which goes into tending, nurturing, and nourishing these beautiful plants.
David C.H. Austin OBE was the original pioneer, seeking to unite the beauty and fragrance of old roses, with the strength of modern varieties. Family values, craftsmanship, and a lifelong passion for roses is the embedded philosophy which brings us back to David Austin Roses time and time again.
If you’re looking for some roses to plant this spring, are planning ahead for autumn and winter planting, or are simply looking for inspiration for the years to come, here are some of our favourite David Austin Roses - and the ones which seem to evoke that special and timeless appeal of the English cottage garden.
Desdemona
The delicate buds open to a beautiful white flower, with the edges tinged a delicate blush pink colour. Although it is said Desdemona prefers full sunlight, ours still does well in partial shade. Repeat flowering, it blooms slightly later than our other roses, but seems to flourish well into early-autumn.
Princess Alexandra of Kent
With glorious big pink, blousy blooms, Princess Alexandra of Kent is a real showstopper in our garden. She has a delicious, summery fragrance, and even when the petals fall, the perfume lasts well in a bowl indoors. Ours basks in full sunlight, which seems to make the large blooms an even richer pink colour.
Olivia Rose Austin
A relatively new addition to our garden, Olivia Rose Austin, with her delicate pink blooms, has quickly established herself, and is often the first of our roses to flower in mid-May. The beautiful, small cupped flowers last well into early-autumn, and she seems to like the partly-shaded spot where she’s planted.
Bobbie James
Although Bobbie James flowers only once, he’s made light work, not only of rambling along the trellis at the top of the fence, but even spilling over into the next door’s garden. He produces large blooms of small white flowers which really come alive in the golden hour light of a summer evening. After he’s finished flowering, the stems are left with copious numbers of tiny orange hips.
Variegata di Bologna
Whenever I post photos of Variegata di Bologna, they always get a lot of attention. This old rose dates from 1869, and is instantly recognisable with her white and crimson stripes. We call it the ‘raspberry ripple’ rose, and although, like many old roses, she flowers only once, the attractive blooms have a rich fragrance.
Gertrude Jekyll
If any rose possessed that quintessential, English old rose scent, then it is surely Gertrude Jekyll. With big pink flowers which seem unmistakably at home in a cottage garden, it’s easy to see why she’s one of the nation’s favourite roses.
Harlow Carr
One thing we love about Harlow Carr, is it’s a bushy rose, so although the flowers are small, you get a lot of them in a small area. It has a strong perfume and it flowers through the summer and into autumn.
I wonder which favourite roses you have in your garden? Might you tempted by some of these? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
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