CHAPTER V
CLIMBING ROSES—AUTUMN FLOWERING
While many of the beautiful roses enumerated in the last chapter are indispensable in our gardens for covering pillars, arches, screens, walls, fences and pergolas, an end comes all too soon to their flowering season. And when it comes we feel the need of other climbers to carry on the succession of blossom until the frosts cut all off. A pergola, for instance, planted with nothing but summer flowering roses, is but a sorry sight in August and September. While if we have been wise, and have made a judicious mixture of these and perpetual roses, it remains a delight till November.
For vigorous climbers of this second section none excel
The Noisette Rose, R. Noisettiana.
This invaluable race was originated by M. Philippe Noisette in America, by fertilizing the Musk rose, R. Moschata, with the Common Blush China, R. Indica (not the Blush Tea rose, R. Indica Odorata). In 1817 he sent the "Blush Noisette" to his brother M. Louis Noisette, a well-known nurseryman in Paris. And its advent was hailed with enthusiasm by all rose-lovers in France; for it was recognized as a new break in climbing roses. In this, and in many of the seedlings which were raised from it, the influence of its Musk rose parent was very strong, the flowers being borne in large clusters, and fragrant with its delicious musky scent. But as time went on, crossings with Tea roses somewhat changed one of the early characteristics of the Noisette, and it approached more closely to the Tea rose—bearing flowers singly—instead of in the large clusters characteristic of the Musk rose.
Aimée Vibert (Vibert, 1828) is one of those early Noisettes which holds its own everywhere. But how seldom do we see that most vigorous and most fragrant of all, Jaune Desprez (Desprez, 1828). Grown against a west wall here, it covered a space some 20 × 20 feet in three years, throwing laterals, five feet and more long every summer; and from the ends of these in late autumn the great heads of bloom hang down, filling the whole air with fragrance; in one cluster alone I have counted seventy-two blossoms, soft sulphur, salmon, and red. This variety, and the beautiful white Lamarque (Maréchal, 1830), both need the shelter of a wall in a warm, dry position.
That singularly beautiful rose Fortune's Yellow or Beauty of Glazenwood (Fortune, 1845), which is classed among the Noisettes, though it has nothing but its beauty in common with them—for it is not perpetual, and its foliage is quite different from theirs—also requires a very dry, warm situation, when, if it is never pruned, it will flower abundantly. I have a plant on a very dry border at the S.W. corner of my house, which has scrambled up to the eaves and is now making efforts to reach the chimneys. The reason that this rose so often fails to bear blossoms is, that being an untidy grower it is pruned. And any one who has once tried to do so should be glad to know that pruning is as fatal to the rose as to the unhappy pruner, for it is armed with the most cruel prickles, like small fish-hooks, of any member of the rose tribe. The flowers, like those of the Banksia roses, being borne on the small twigs growing from the laterals of the second year, any pruning which destroys these destroys all chance of blossom. And this rule holds good with most of the Noisettes.
Ophirie (Goubault, 1841), with its rather small nankeen and copper-red flowers and glossy leaves, is also glad of a little shelter. While the delightful Céline Forestier (Trouillard, 1842) will flourish in almost any situation, though it prefers a wall.