Old Garden Roses - Rosa cinnamomea (the Whitsuntide Rose) and Rosa rubiginosa (the old Sweet Brier)

Chapter 2 (extract 3) of "Roses for English gardens" by Jekyll and Mawley (1902), in which Miss Jekyll discusses the Whitsuntide Rose, a beautiful American wild rose, as well as the old English favourite, the Sweet Brier.

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An old Rose that used to be in nearly every garden and is now but rarely seen is the Cinnamon Rose (R. cinnamomea), in some parts of the southern counties called the Whitsuntide Rose. The small flat flowers are pretty and have a distinct scent. It makes a neat bush of rather upright habit. An equally old garden Rose is R. lucida, an American species. It is fairly common in old gardens, forming rounded bushes, and will grow anywhere even in the poorest soils, where the autumn tinted foliage, bright yellow and crimson, and the quantities of flat-shaped scarlet hips are very ornamental. The flower is single and of a full pink colour. It seems to like slight shade, as it shrivels in full sun. There is a strong growing garden variety, much more free in habit than the type, but it does not make such neat bushes. It is remarkable that a Rose so well known should have no English name. The double form that has been long in English gardens, but has never become common, and whose merit is only now becoming recognised, is one of the loveliest of bush Roses. It has the pretty old name Rose d'Amour.

How this Rose of American origin first came to be a plant of old English gardens is a question that I must leave to be answered by the botanist-antiquary; what chiefly concerns us is that it is one of the most delightful things in the garden.

The Scotch Briers are considered in the chapter on Brier Roses, and the newer Sweet Briers in that of New Garden Roses, though the old pink single Sweet Brier is, of course, in place here. Many are the ways in which it can be used. Planted in a double row and judiciously pruned, it makes a capital and most fragrant hedge from four to six feet high ; but it is perhaps prettiest planted among shrubs, with its graceful arching stems shooting up through them, or in bushy brakes either by itself or among Thorn bushes in one of the regions where the garden joins wilder ground. It will also assume quite a climbing habit if it is led into some tree like a Holly, or encouraged to scramble through straggling Black or White Thorn of tallish growth in some old hedge.

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See also:

Old Garden Rose - The cabbage or Provence Rose (Rosa centifolia) and the Provins rose (Rosa gallica)

Old Garden Roses - The damask rose

Old Garden Roses - Rosa alba

Old Garden Roses - Rosa alpina and Rosa arvensis

Old Garden Roses - the Banksian Roses and the China Roses

Old Garden Roses - Fortune's Yellow and certain other old roses

A list of the best Old Garden Roses