Chapter 15 (extract 2) of "Roses for English Gardens" by Jekyll and Mawley (1902), in which Miss Jekyll discusses colour harmony and colour clashes in the roses. As she puts it: "two beautiful Roses can hurt each other by incompatibility of kind and colour".
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Illustration: October roses and Clematis paniculata.
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Great care should be given to assorting the colours and in putting together kinds that have some affinity of blood and harmony of tint. It is well never to mix Hybrid Perpetuals and Teas, except, perhaps, some of the more solid Teas of the Dijon class. But Roses well assorted are like a company of sympathetic friends—they better one another.
It is always well to have two or three of the same range of colouring, with perhaps one harmonious departure, such as Madame Lambard, Papa Gontier, and Laurette Messimy, or G. Nabonnand, Vicountess Folkestone, and Hon. Edith Gilford, or Souvenir de Catherine Guillot, White Maman Cochet, and Anna Ollivier.
The same suggestion will be found of use in arranging them in beds, for a jarring mixture, such as one of the orange-copper Hybrid Teas, with kinds of cool pink and white, will have an unsatisfactory effect. Both may be lovely things, but they should not be placed together. But to learn to observe this—first of all to see that it makes a difference, then to become aware that it might be better, and finally to be distinctly vexed with an inharmonious combination, these are all stages in growth of perception that should be gone through in the training of the Rose enthusiast's mind and eye.
It is best and easiest to learn to do this with the cut flowers, and a pleasant task it is to have a quantity of mixed cut Roses and to lay them together in beautiful harmonies—best, perhaps, in some cool, shady place upon the grass—and then to observe what two or three, or three or four kinds, go best together, and to note it for further planting or indoor arrangement. Then, as an example of what is unsuitable, try a Captain Christy and a Madame Eugene Resal together, and see how two beautiful Roses can hurt each other by incompatibility of kind and colour.
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