Chapter 16 (extract 1) of "Roses for English Gardens" by Jekyll and Mawley (1902), in which Miss Jekyll gives the benefit of her experience of the performance of different roses on the Italian Riviera. Some of the great villa gardens, like Sir Thomas Hanbury's at La Mortola, had superb roses. As Miss Jekyll explains, of foremost importance are the Banksian roses.
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Illustration: Yellow Banksian Rose on an Italian villa.
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CHAPTER XVI
ROSES IN ENGLISH GARDENS ON THE RIVIERA
It is very surprising to find how few kinds of Roses are grown in gardens on this coast, and consequently a mere list is rather disappointing, the fact being that it is the beauty and the abundance of their flowers that constitutes the charm rather than the very great variety of kinds. The cause is very easy to comprehend.
Those who care for their gardens do not as a rule come out much before Christmas, and leave at the latest by the middle of May, so that any Rose that does not flower freely during the late autumn or early spring is of little importance, however beautiful it may be. Moreover, the great sun power and the fatal Rose beetles that tear the petals to ribbons in May prevent the latest Roses being of real value, while the gorgeous blaze of Geraniums, Gazanias, Petunias, and such summer flowers destroys the tender tones of those Roses which bloom late.
It is the climbing Roses that are the joy of the gardener here. They grow rampantly and flower profusely, whether they be grown trained to walls, pergolas, arches, pillars, and such like, or if they simply are planted near a tree, preferably an Olive or Cypress, and fling their sprays of blossom down from the very highest to the lowest branches, with never a pruning knife or gardener's shears to mar their native grace.
The Banksian Roses must have the first place for beauty and abundance, though only the big white R. B. Fortunei is fairly perpetual, and decks its glossy evergreen foliage with isolated flowers through the whole winter. The single yellow Banksian Rose, introduced not more than twenty years ago from Italy, and first admired in Sir Thomas Hanbury's well known garden at La Mortola, deserves a special notice, because it is fully three weeks earlier than the double forms in spring, and gives a delightful summer effect in the month of March in sunny situations, and is even more rampant and floriferous than any other member of the family, becoming a real tree itself.
There are two forms of the double yellow Banksian Rose. For richness of colour and beauty of flowering spray I think Jaune decidedly the best, and indeed, for its period of flower, the most effective of all. The second and less well known form—that I know as Jaune serin — has larger, paler flowers on longer stems, is decidedly less brilliant in effect, but has just the same delicate perfume the small double white exhales, and which is curiously enough denied by many people who are appreciative of other scents. The common double white Banksian Rose is the most abundant and ubiquitous of all, and is as much the ornament of trees, walls, pergolas, and pillars in the month of April and early May as the common Ivy is in more northern climates. It is everywhere, and nowhere out of place, though it loses its leaves in the month of January.
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