Chapter 16 (extract 3) of "Roses for English Gardens" by Jekyll and Mawley (1902), in which Miss Jekyll picks out more roses suitable for the gardens of the Italian Riviera. Here she lists the Noisettes, Hybrid Perpetuals, Teas, Hybrid Teas and China roses that are most suitable.
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Illustration: Rose Antoine Rivoire.
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Noisette Roses.—After Lamarque, which has already received its due notice, Jaune Desprez must be mentioned on account of its perfume and beauty in spring. Curiously enough it is not always a winter bloomer, but it still luxuriantly adorns many an old garden.
- Idéal is essentially a Rose for this coast. In spring it even rivals Fortune's Yellow, but it comes in several weeks later and is deeper in its rosy tones. Did it but bloom at all in winter it would be unsurpassable.
- Dr. Rouges is the most intensely brilliant shade of orange-red that I know, and when fully proved will be invaluable as a climber when its winter blooming is established. The rich claret-red shoots in January are almost as brilliant as any flower could be.
- William A. Richardson no longer climbs here, but flowers splendidly in winter as a straggling bush.
- Pink Rover must certainly not be omitted from the list of climbing Roses, for there are so few of its fresh and lovely shade of colour. It is very sweetscented, blooms abundantly before Christmas, and wherever grown is at once a favourite. It seems to revel in the conditions here.
- Grüss an Teplitz, a seedling between Cramoisi Grimpant and Gloire des Rosomanes, is another very delightful semi-climbing Rose on this coast. Most brilliant red in colour, sweet-scented and free, it has hardly yet been sufficiently planted, so its merits are not fully established.
Hybrid Teas are decidedly the most in vogue now, owing not only to their size and beauty, but to the length of stalk with which they may be cut. As garden Roses they are equally valuable.
- Caroline Testout entirely takes the place of La France, which never showed itself to perfection on this coast.
- Marquise Litta has made its mark also, and is very rich and bright in colour during the winter.
- Gloire Lyonnaise and Captain Christy are splendid winter bloomers, but the flowers are not considered so valuable for the market.
- Belle Siebrecht is also becoming a very popular Rose, while Mme. Jules Grolez is considered worthless, for its petals are soft and easily spoilt, and it does not grow with anything like the same vigour. There is no doubt that many of the Roses that do well in English gardens do not enjoy a more southern climate, and it is curious to remark how the descriptions of French raisers refer generally to Roses grown in a hotter climate than England, so that their descriptions are not so likely to mislead in the south as those in the north are apt to imagine.
Hybrid Perpetual Roses are little grown, and are chiefly used for late autumn cutting out of doors. For the first three months of the year they are now flowered under glass, so that they can be cut with the long stems required in France. I need only mention Paul Neyron (so fine in December), Ulrich Brunner, Baroness Rothschild, Mrs. John Laing, General Jacqueminot, and Eclair as the best and most useful here. The growth of Roses under glass for market in January, February, and early March has become a great industry, and is largely displacing the hardy winter-blooming Teas grown on the sunny terraces.
Tea Roses, which not only bear but enjoy the summer heat and drought, flowering freely in November and December after the autumn rains and pruning, are cultivated not only in gardens, but as a field crop, and the December crop of bloom is the most valuable, so that everything yields to that. To name any but the most valuable is unnecessary here, and, roughly speaking, Nabonnand's catalogue of his own seedlings represents what has been most grown during the last twenty years. Of these, however, many are obsolete.
- Isabelle Nabonnand is one of the few really good winter Roses I have never seen grown in England. One of the oldest, it still is worth growing in any garden. Its blush-centred white blooms are fairly double, and yet open freely through the winter.
- General Schablikine has at last found its way to England. For many years this was the only rose coloured Tea to be depended on in winter. Now that glass is so much used, and larger and longer stalked blooms are required, it is only used as a decorative garden Rose.
- Marie Van Houtte is another old Rose that is gradually being superseded, as its flowers obstinately refuse to hold up their heads, but its beauty and freedom make it indispensable in the winter garden. Paul Nabonnand has for some years reigned supreme from the beauty and freedom of its pale pink blooms in December. It is the Rose that with Schablikine produces the most summer-like effect during the winter.
- Fiametta Nabonnand is a very good flesh-white Rose, as indeed are all those that are named after the Nabonnand family, particularly for winter blooming.
- Papa Gontier, so bold in growth, so rich in petal, is the most useful of all winter Roses for cut bloom. Its size and brilliant rose-pink colour are remarkable in this climate. I have never seen it in its true character in England. The fields and hedges of Safrano, the first of all winter-blooming Roses, deserve a passing mention, though now, save as a hedge Rose, it is not worth a place. Its abundance of flowers about Christmastide is its chief attraction, and at that season it is still sent in quantity to northern cities.
- Antoine Rivoire is the Rose that has made a mark lately, both in the garden and in the grower's ground. Its beauty and fresh pink and white colouring (white in December), and its fine vigorous stems crowned with bold upright flowers, have at once raised it to high favour. It looks as if it were a cross between Captain Christy and some old Tea like Rubens, and is better than either. Mme. Cadeau Ramey is a very sweet and lovely garden Rose, but has not as yet at all the same vogue, being of the Devoniensis type.
The China Roses and Hybrid Chinas do not find favour here, they are too fleeting and too thin, and Tea Roses give us more beauty. For instance, Beauté Inconstante, a Tea, has not only even more brilliant orange-scarlet tones than any hybrid China, but it is so free and hardy, as well as solid in petal, that it puts to shame its cousins that are so welcome in northern gardens.
- Cramoisi Supérieur is lovely as a dwarf hedge, but is not nearly so good a winter bloomer as the climbing form Cramoisi Grimpant; so it is in hedgerows and avenues that the glowing masses of this are seen in company with the pale pink Indica Major, which here takes the place of the Hawthorn hedge.
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