Hi @Marlorena. I have limited capacity in which to grow roses - or anything else for that matter - hence the growing in pots at least for the immediate future. We are currently in the throes of digging out and re-planting a border between our house and next-doors but it is going to be a long process, the border having been neglected for ten years before we purchased the house. I have plans afoot but am still adjusting to the difference in climate! Growing therein are hundreds of freesias which we are going to weed around/re-plant.
Re the climate, we tend to have mild winters and long, hot summers. Phew, are they hot?!
I do have a rose in flower - Fragrant Delight. My phone is old so any photos do not do the plant(s) justice.
If I need any advice I know I am in good hands - thank you in advance.
@2000GTV - excited to see photos of your garden in Italy. My wife’s family are from Puglia 🙂
I could see today that the growth on my roses has really picked up. Royal Jubilee in particular is really starting to stretch out. More buds on Desdemona. Can’t believe it’s already going to be May!
Wow, @Mr.Vine Eye whereabouts? We are very settled here, have been warmly welcomed and love our new Italian "family".
My "garden"/patio at the moment is endeavouring to be a collection of brightly coloured flowers in brightly coloured pots. Initial thoughts were a specific colour spectrum in only black, grey and white planters with pink, purple, white etc. flowers but I soon got bored and thought 'what the hell?' so went to the other extreme and plumped for a riot of colour.
Martina Franca, Puglia, southern Italy Love living in Italy but a Loiner at heart
..just to say on the subject of scents according to colour.. if anyone is growing the DA rose 'Dame Judi Dench', an apricot coloured rose, you might wonder what the strange smell you get from it sometimes... DA describe many of their roses as having a 'tea' scent, but this one has something extra to that..
..I described it as 'tarry'.. and in discussions with a rosarian I was informed that this particular smell comes from the organic phenolic compounds found in roses.. phenol is also extracted from coal tar.. ..the same smell can be found in some soaps, although the use of coal tar in soap was banned some time ago, and replaced with tea tree oil..
..R. rugosa petals are also high in phenolic compounds, yet I cannot detect the 'tar' in rugosas... an earlier apricot Austin rose called 'Jayne Austin' is also strongly scented, a mixture of tea and tar..
..yet another DA rose similarly 'fragranced' is 'Molineux' but to my nose the tar element is again not as strong as in Dame Judi...
I find that grouping roses’ scent into tea/old rose/fruity/ myrrh isn’t a very helpful nor descriptive nomenclature.. there are a few DA roses described as myrrh for example that come across completely different from each other.. and I couldn’t quite link them all to any one particular note.. which makes me wonder, what defines a myrhh fragrance.. or fruity fragrance, or tea, for that matter. There are so many types of fruits out there so calling a scent fruity is rather a generalisation surely.. I prefer describing the scent as I experience it.. sometimes I think a rose smells like sweet apple, sometimes spiced poached pear.. so on and so forth.
On the subject of DA roses, there was much discussion here and in other countries last year, when it was announced that the popular roses Munstead Wood, Lady Emma Hamilton and a dark red called LD Braithwaite, were to be withdrawn from DA's inventory.. sooner rather than later... at the time I questioned it as they were still for sale... the report came from Horticultural Week initially in an interview with a DA representative.
They seem to have had a change of heart, at least for now, as all those roses are still available to pre order for November delivery..
..the myrrh scent in roses is defined by being similar to the scent of Sweet Cecily - Myrrhis odorata.. that's why it's described as myrrh..
..the tea scent origin is conflicting... generally it's thought to come from the time during the early 19th Century when roses were brought over to England from China... the scent of these roses was described as being like ''a freshly opened packet of tea''... the other story is that they got the name Tea roses because they were brought to England on Tea Clipper ships...
..one Tea rose I have in my collection is called 'Duchesse de Brabant' and it is powerfully scented of tea, like a freshly opened packet..
....these Tea roses are the ancestors of what we grow today as Hybrid Tea roses..
..edit..corrected to Sweet Cecily, not Sweet Woodruff..
On the topic of the "tea" fragrance, I've never understood why it is called "tea" (only knowing it comes from tea roses) and I've had it associated with hybrid teas, which often have this rose-like fragrance but very different from the "old rose" fragrance (the fragrance of damask roses). For example, Princess Alexandra of Kent has this more modern fragrance, although she also has a slight hint of "old rose" too. And then I smelled Crépuscule. Crépuscule is like dry black tea or almost a little bit like tobacco (dried, not a lit cigarette) or buddleia. It doesn't have any rosiness in it. My husband doesn't smell the tea or tobacco in it, he just said "it doesn't smell like a rose". I can't wait for it to flower because last year, it focused on growing, so this year I hope in many flowers... but no buds yet, it doesn't like this cold spring I think.
Posts
Re the climate, we tend to have mild winters and long, hot summers. Phew, are they hot?!
I do have a rose in flower - Fragrant Delight. My phone is old so any photos do not do the plant(s) justice.
If I need any advice I know I am in good hands - thank you in advance.
@Omori - thank you for the the welcome.
Love living in Italy but a Loiner at heart
I could see today that the growth on my roses has really picked up. Royal Jubilee in particular is really starting to stretch out. More buds on Desdemona. Can’t believe it’s already going to be May!
Will take some more photos this weekend.
My "garden"/patio at the moment is endeavouring to be a collection of brightly coloured flowers in brightly coloured pots. Initial thoughts were a specific colour spectrum in only black, grey and white planters with pink, purple, white etc. flowers but I soon got bored and thought 'what the hell?' so went to the other extreme and plumped for a riot of colour.
Love living in Italy but a Loiner at heart
..I described it as 'tarry'.. and in discussions with a rosarian I was informed that this particular smell comes from the organic phenolic compounds found in roses.. phenol is also extracted from coal tar..
..the same smell can be found in some soaps, although the use of coal tar in soap was banned some time ago, and replaced with tea tree oil..
..R. rugosa petals are also high in phenolic compounds, yet I cannot detect the 'tar' in rugosas... an earlier apricot Austin rose called 'Jayne Austin' is also strongly scented, a mixture of tea and tar..
..yet another DA rose similarly 'fragranced' is 'Molineux' but to my nose the tar element is again not as strong as in Dame Judi...
They seem to have had a change of heart, at least for now, as all those roses are still available to pre order for November delivery..
..the tea scent origin is conflicting... generally it's thought to come from the time during the early 19th Century when roses were brought over to England from China... the scent of these roses was described as being like ''a freshly opened packet of tea''... the other story is that they got the name Tea roses because they were brought to England on Tea Clipper ships...
..one Tea rose I have in my collection is called 'Duchesse de Brabant' and it is powerfully scented of tea, like a freshly opened packet..
....these Tea roses are the ancestors of what we grow today as Hybrid Tea roses..
..edit..corrected to Sweet Cecily, not Sweet Woodruff..
And then I smelled Crépuscule. Crépuscule is like dry black tea or almost a little bit like tobacco (dried, not a lit cigarette) or buddleia. It doesn't have any rosiness in it. My husband doesn't smell the tea or tobacco in it, he just said "it doesn't smell like a rose".
I can't wait for it to flower because last year, it focused on growing, so this year I hope in many flowers... but no buds yet, it doesn't like this cold spring I think.