Gardening with Margaret Matthews
The rose — queen of flowers
by Margaret Matthews
"What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
… Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare)
For thousands of years roses have cas their spell on the world, long before homo sapiens evolved. There is a fossilised rose in a museum in Colarado, North America, said to be at least 35 million years old. The earliest known picture of a rose is a fresco on a wall in the Palace of Knossos in Crete, which dates back to the sixteenth century BC.
Roses have exerted a great influence on history and heraldry, myth and legend, art and literature. Their fragrance has been captured in perfume, and their petals have been used in ceremonies such as weddings and funerals. Also, they have graced our gardens from the smallest cottage garden to those of great estates. A justly famous rose garden was that created by the Empress Josephine at the Chateau de la Malmaison in France in the mid nineteenth century. This is but one example of famous rose gardens throughout the world.
Artists have found great inspiration from the rose. Think of the ‘still life’ paintings of great bowls of roses, often with a few petals artfully scattered onto a polished table, enabling the artist to use the reflection demonstrate his or her skill. Then there are the deceptively simple paintings of a single rose, faithfully reproduced. In Europe, beautiful wood carvings of roses can be found in old churches. The ‘rose window’ has been a feature in European cathedrals since the middle ages.
Pierre Redoute (1749-1840), a Belgian, studied botany in Kew Gardens and painted over 6000 delicate watercolours of flowers. His famous book entitled Les Roses was published in 1817. He knew Sir Joseph Banks and Marie Antoinette was his patron and a book called ‘The Man Who Painted Roses’ celebrated his work.
The rose has always been a powerful symbol in history and heraldry. We have all heard of the War of the Roses and the red and white rose of York.
The rose has also been a universal symbol in literature. There are thousands of love poems often extolling the purity of the white rose and the red rose as an emblem of passion or death. J B O’Reilly wrote:
"The red rose whispers of passion
The white rose whispers of love,
The red rose is a falcon,
The white rose is a dove."
‘For Love of a Rose’ by Antonia Ridge is the story of the breeding of the famous Peace rose. The first rosary beads were so-called because they were made from compressed rose petals, which gave off a sweet fragrance, and the white rose is a symbol of the Virgin Mary.
There are many legends associated with the rose. St Francis of Assisi is said to have flung himself into the centre of a rose bush to help him ‘overcome temptation’, and ever afterwards the bush was devoid of thorns.
The oldest living rose bush, reputedly 1000 years old, is located at Hildesheim, Germany (or was until a few years ago).
There are 250 species of the rose and hundreds and hundreds of cultivars and hybrids. Roses originate in Europe, Asia and North America but there is no rose native to Australia. They grow best in temperate zones and are at home in the heavy clay belt in Victoria, which is evident by the numbers successfully grown here.
There are climbers and ramblers, old and modern shrub roses, bush roses, floribundas which have clusters of flowers, single and double blooms, tea roses, tough thorny rugosa roses, standard and weeping standard roses, miniature and patio roses. There is a rose for every situation and purpose.
Rose breeders devote endless years in their quest for new roses. An English rose breeder, David Austin, has made his mark on the world by creating roses which have the long-flowering qualities of modern roses with the fragrance of the old roses of the past. Many of his roses are named for characters in Shakespeare’s plays, such as Wise Portia or The Wyf of Bath.
Alister Clark, an Australian rose breeder in the first half of this century, left us a valuable legacy which was not fully appreciated until recently. Two of his roses you may recognise are Honeyflow and Nancy Hayward. His most famous rose is Lorraine Lee.
In our gardens the first flush of bloom is beginning and as the buds open and the flowers reveal their delicate beauty, stop for a moment and imagine what the gardens of the world would be without the rose.
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