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Blackthorn Rose Review: Chartreuse de Parme

11/2/2021

 
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When all things are truly considered, there are actually very few roses that merit a featured position in any mixed garden.  That's quite a sad admission after so many centuries of fervent breeding and distribution.  Our Zone 9 location offers no earthly challenges to any damn rose; no gophers, exotic attack beetles, frost heaving, desert summers or blue-titty blizzards- nothing.  And yet, when browsing my photo files for new review candidates I'm always struck both by the number of plants we've consigned to steamy decay on our half-sentient pile and the many that have simply popped their simpering clogs for no particular reason.   
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Unless you're prepared to endlessly spray and surfeit them, roses often suck.  Which is why I always pay attention when one stands out, aesthetically and constitutionally.  Chartreuse de Parme is just such a paragon, a classic, high-end hybrid tea that is both aristocratic and tough; a veritable dragon in the garden.  The magenta-averse may be getting the vapours at this point because CdP is the kween of the naughtily vibrant blue-pinks and you may associate this colour with bad taste; I would agree that it can be horrific in the wrong situ, but just breathe now and remember that some things are more than the sum of their parts.

Chartreuse de Parme was born in 1996 in the famous Delbard nursery.  Those people know what the fuck they are doing.  In a previous review I insisted one should choose a rose with at least a couple of well-known stars in their genetic background, but then CdP comes along with a bonkers ancestry to poop all over that cosy theory.  You won't be shocked to discover one of its parents is the very lovely Nuit d'Orient, or, as we say down here while scratching our balls, Big Purple, a highly-perfumed stunner that only made it a few years in our yard.  The blooms and rich fragrance are reminiscent of that pretty little fella, if more classically pink.  
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Ancestry-wise, the deep red Charles Mallerin and pink Yves Piaget have their own striking qualities but the grandparent Peace is probably the main source of CdP's best bits, given that few of its other antecedents are spectacularly distinguished.  This rose somehow squeezed every last drop of greatness from that Mendelian lottery.  Golf clap!

Chartreuse de Parme is an arresting rose with a decidedly haughty carriage and a generous growth habit, standing boldly upright on stout canes with enough dark, glossy foliage to balance that pose and provide a backdrop to blooms that are held clear on lengthy and gratifyingly butch stems.  Here it grows to a good 1.5 x 1m wide, well beyond the '90cm' indicated on the label, though doesn't aspire to much more so you won't need a chainsaw to keep it in check.  
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On this anonymous rootstock it is a good doer, tolerating considerable interference from underplanting and general shovel intrusion.  This is especially praiseworthy because high-quality flower producers are usually hungry, thirsty and fussy about setbacks.  I don't think our CdP has ever lost a main cane or aborted a flower cycle in spite of these insults, nor have I seen it defoliate with rust or blackspot, our two main aggressors.  So two thumbs up for health. ​
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But let's face it, no one plants Chartreuse de Parme for its rude health or admirable posture.  Rose fanciers are flower sluts and this one comes through with a cyclic sufficiency of tough, slightly leathery, classic tea rose blooms in an intense, hypnotic blue magenta with a slightly silvered reverse (please note the camera exaggerates this phenomenon, especially in the above and below pics).  That pleasing sculptural form and glowing colour withstand rain unscathed, remaining almost supernaturally clean.  This is super-important in a maritime climate.  CdP is a standout cut flower both in the vase and as the star of a bouquet, lasting well and playing nice with a lot of other flowers.
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 You may hesitate to expect more and yet there is a definite and respectable perfume, a medium-strength old-school tearose with a bit of dusty fruit and that cool unplaceable note that is possibly unique to this class.  Sawn blonde wood?  Crushed leaves?  Aged pot pourri?  The scent lasts pretty well and can sweeten up in the vase but lacks a wee bit of silage, if I'm going to pick any nits.

Does CdP suck in any respect?  Not really.  It can sometimes be a bit bloom-shy in the first spring cycle for me despite full sun.  There might be an extended lull between flushes, understandable given the biological cost of such quality flowers.  And like many five-star prospects, Chartreuse de Parme is congenitally unsuited to sitting quietly in the landscape.  It will stand out like dogs’ bollocks unless provided with similarly flamboyant companions, so don’t plant it thinking it will somehow magically calm the fuck down if you throw enough gypsophila at it.  Give her red and lime euphorbias and delphiniums and those giant African lobelias to hang with.  CdP's surreal circus beauty is no clown show and deserves pride of place.

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Blackthorn Rose Review: Glamis Castle (David Austin)

9/6/2019

 
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White is also far more aesthetically problematic than one might assume.  I mean, basics the world over have gone crazy planting swathes of Iceberg Rose along their post and rail driveways, but someone should have told them a lack of positive colour doesn't mean an easy fit in the landscape. 
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It's pronounced glahrms, apparently.  First, a semi-rambling word about white roses in general.  You can skip this bit if you just want the shit on Glamis Castle. 

White isn't my favourite colour and I'm not 100% enthusiastic about its stealthy creep into our garden, largely on the back of an increasing appreciation of older varieties.  I plant them in spite of all that tasteful pallor.

Genetically, colour in roses can be completely or incompletely dominant (i.e red + white can result in red, white or pink).  But with blanc featuring so heavily in the enormous Rosaceae family (roses, berries, apples etc.), you'd think it would be easy enough to breed a decent white rose.  Or that this embarrassment of ancestral riches should have endowed any offspring with the rustic health of those progenitors.  No.  

White is no guarantee of a quality plant. Wish I'd known that a couple of years back.
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White's warm/cool and pure/dirty variations can look fucking horrific within spitting distance of each other.  Check prospective tonalities against neighbouring plants before you dig the hole and achieve this outrage aux bonnes mœurs in your own demesne.

Despite the drawbacks, some people are all about a white rose, no matter what.  If you're one of them, you've probably been pointed in Glamis Castle's direction.  It's a David Austin baby from his middle period and I'll get to the significance of that later.
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Though of limited sillage, their scent is strong and ever-presentt; R always leans over them and says 'peanut butter'.  I would personally describe Glamis Castle's scent as a classic rose myrrh, serving a warm confusion of marzipan/almond notes, vintage suede, egg nog, touches of tonka, high violet and fresh elderflower.  You may detect a funkadelic leaning in this combination and you're dead right about that, so if myrrh gives you cat's bum face, Glamis Castle doesn't belong in your trolley.
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GC's flowers are a deeply-cupped and slightly ruffled joy, containing enough petals to provide that gracious vintage payoff without looking contrived, slutty or overstuffed.  They are a pretty neutral, saturated white, sort of like milk bottle jubes, rich and selfy, neither glaringly brilliant nor disappointingly dingey.  This wonder is probably achieved via the dense, matte texture of the petals, their substance producing a white that plays well with other hues, looking dirty alongside only the purest, coldest iterations of this same colour.  

​The flowers resist rain well, flopping slightly when hammered but they don't usually ball in our situation.  
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It springs from the loins of the yellow Graham Thomas, and Mary Rose, a tall pink that's usually a good doer, and from whence GC's lovely scent probably derives.  I grow both parents.  That beguiling white skipped a generation through the floriferous Mary Rose, which features The Friar and the surpassingly beauteous Ivory Fashion in her immediate lineage.
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And now for the negatives.  


Glamis Castle is an amazingly shitty plant, holistically speaking- a typical DA spotty herbert of the period.  It is puny and unsatisfying, mine clocking in at around 90cm after many years.  Half of that is rangy, leafless twig-leg, bristling with the sort of thorns that hole your clothes from the other side of the fucking garden.  

​I've pruned with its gawky frame in mind, trying to minimise the effect to no avail, and now I just basically dead-head and let it be its bad self.  The messy crown consists of smallish dark green leaves, remarkable only for their ability to explode utterly into rust/blackspotaggedon immediately upon leafing out at the end of winter.  
The top left pic is by no means the full measure of this unfortunate tendency.  GC is planted on its own in an area with great ventilation and extra fert etc., but still it poxes up like the fucking Toxic Avenger, hangs on to the offending foliage and joins forces with its nasty dad, Graham Thomas, in spraying plague around the garden.  I suspect them of rusting my garlic during bad years.  Behold its tangled, thorny fugliness below.
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And yet I do not kill it with fire.  I really should, because there's no excuse for harbouring manky hos like GC.  Luckily, most of my other plantings were selected for health and prosper in spite of this Patient Zero lurking in their midst.  

Like a dozen other David Austin shitbirds I could name, Glamis Castle survives on the basis of two things; paradoxical charisma and hardcore myrrh.  There it is, utterly ratchet but still blooming away a week out from the shortest day.  Its flowers are divine and quite plentifully supplied in spite of well, everything. They so beautifully reconcile the other colours in a nice fat bunch (see below).  And who can stop a myrrh freak from getting their taste?  We just never fucking learn.

Seriously, don't plant Glamis Castle. I wish I hadn't and will probably summon the impetus to bin it... one day.  It needs spraying to be at all presentable and no rose is worth contaminating our struggling biome with that garbage.  If you're determined to plonk it in your spray-free garden, you need to be sure your other roses/susceptible plants can weather the persistent disease burden.  But there are other, less problematic whites and strong myrrhs out there.
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All Tea, Half Shade: More Roses for your Noses


Blackthorn Rose Review: Golden Celebration (David Austin)

15/1/2019

 
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I have some hard things to say about David Austin roses.  While his innovative breeding program has served up some ravishing aesthetics, those visual fruits have withered on the vine of practical reality too often for me to respond with anything more than a slow clap.  

​I know how to grow a damn rose by now and furthermore I garden in New Zealand i.e. premium fantasy rose territory; moderate temps and a low pest burden.  And still so many of his creations fail to thrive here.  WTF, David? 
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​His program's recent redirect toward more spray-free vigour is both overdue and admirable.  Just keep those problematic legacy genes in mind whilst losing your shit over a tag pic and don't get schooled the expensive and frustrating way.  It took me a while to catch on.
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On a happier note
, Golden Celebration, as you can probably see from the pics, is one of Austin's top shelf efforts and there will always be a place in my garden for her.

GC is a yellow rose for yellow rose haters.  I used to be one of them and GC pretty much converted me.  She suffers none of the unpleasantness that so often afflicts them, boasting a bloom of gloriously buxom aspect that lasts as well as any other and doesn't bleach out to pallid toilet paper ickiness.  Ignore the white fade apparent in some of these images; it's mostly just an artefact of photography.  GC keeps her buttery goodness til the last minute.  
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​It's sometimes argued that Austin only intended his lines for British conditions and if so, he should have articulated that before marketing them the world over.  In the end, his roses' failings boil down to a fundamental selection process that was skewed toward flower form over everything else, especially in his earlier efforts. 
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This colour isn't one you really expect to find in a natural flower- a rich, custardy tempera gold rather than the cooler dilute lemon of yore.  It's like saffron rice or Baltic amber, its richesse upheld by the thickness of the petals and a bloom that is both graceful and pneumatic.

GC's gigantic flowers really are a perfect combination of substance and structure, with just the right boop of raunchy informality.  They are broad, semi-pirate-ruffled and medium-rise once open.  Despite their size and weight they sit proud on the bush and handle rain incredibly well, never balling or rotting out, even in our maritime spring.  They are a better picking prospect than most DA roses and you might get three days in the vase before they break.  Though she is intensely theatrical in full spate, somehow, rather inexplicably, the total impression is more dignified than the sum of her parts, just in case my description is giving you the willies.  

​You might have noticed by now that 
Golden Celebration is also endlessly photogenic.  If I ever lose R, I usually find him hovering around this rose with a wide angle in some sort of fugue state.
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Here she is in a vase with Summer Song.​  GC is an easier fit in a mixed situation than you might imagine, finding analogues in hot, thick pinks, sweaty reds and heavy sunset colours.  I have her alongside other saucy hos like Darcey Bussell and Rose de Rêscht, for example.  Scarlet poppies and deep purple or crimson clematis make truly heavenly accompaniments.  Just remember she is a potent wig-snatcher in the wrong setting and eats lesser yellows for breakfast, so it's best to avoid an unfair contest.
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By mid-morning t
here is just enough of a low tea scent  (last night's dried out cognac glass + broken packing crate) to qualify as an olfactory experience but I wouldn't buy this plant on that basis.  The 'sauternes and strawberry' claims on the DA site are IMO hyperbolic and by that I mean complete bullshit.
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Here's Graham Thomas (left) compared with Golden Celebration.  GT is slightly more entirely self-yellow.
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The foliage is probably as median-rose as anything out there; middle green, sort of matte without really giving that overall impression and large in scale.  Thankfully it is dense enough to cover the fuuucking awkward architecture that so often lies beneath.  ​ 

That's right.  I ugly-shamed her undercarriage.  Welcome to the darker side of Golden Celebration.
How do I say this nicely?  There is... some monsterism.  GC is the strangest rose, build-wise, her waxy, exuberant canes leaning out at weird angles, half powering away into octopoid madness while others extend in whippy little tendrils to offer a single bud at their terminus.  I do not understand her structure.
I've grown this rose for about 10 years as a graft.  Unlike many other DA numbers, she can go without a drink for some time and never looks thirsty.  Half a day of shade doesn't bother her and she is both reliably floriferous and infallibly vigorous.  We've been through some pretty gnarly plague seasons so I'd rate her constitution around 7/10 in that she will power through blackspot without getting naked and remain rust and mildew free in our dense plantings and humidity.  

​In this respect she is remarkably contrary to one of her parents, Graham Thomas.  That guy is a leprous little coffin-dodger I should have nuked from orbit years ago.  Abraham Darby is the other daddy; he is nothing if not sturdy so GC must favour that side.
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In Zone-9 areas like this, GC will split her pants and blow out into an enormous (thankfully fairly thornless) Cthuloid abnormality in the blink of an unwary eye.  In the pic above right she is at about 1.5m after leafing out and is getting ready to explode in all directions after her first flush; at this point, I pounce with the secateurs in an effort to contain her.  Then you are confronted with deciding where and when to prune her, which is a nightmare you never wake from.  Her bud spacing and general morphology defeat the conventional approach so I tend to take long stems when cutting for the vase, behead the monster-canes as they emerge and then brutally lop the whole plant down to knee height in winter, chainsaw-style.  That final step makes for a tragic spectacle, though to be honest, I'm almost grateful there's so little you can do to influence her final expression.  Every year she ignores my hapless curtailment and boofs right back out into the big-boned heaux she was before.  You should definitely find a spot for her.
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Blackthorn Rose Review: Scentimental (Floribunda)

2/12/2018

 
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Okay so I briefly ranted.  It's over now, I promise. Scentimental is a striped rose par excellence.  But even when we dismiss the aforementioned prejudice, it almost falls at the second hurdle- that name.  Rose names these days are either depressingly brutalist (City of Scungeycrust), punny/cringe-tastic (Tee Hee Lady Panties), supercilious literary references (oh hi, David Austin), or just hideously cynical (OMG Best Mum Eva!!!).  

So while it could have been worse, 
Scentimental is a crap title for this amazing floribunda and really plays into the rose snob's hands.  Look at the pic to the right there; if that plant was called Premier Ribband de la Toute Courtesan or some shit like that, there would be acres of foolios gushing over its superior qualities.  ​
Striped roses are like BDSM.  You either roll that way or you do not, so I'm not going to try and sell you this variety if you object on principle.  I totally respect your discretion.  

Ha ha!  Just kidding.  Rose snobs are the worst and they should absolutely be judged and shunned because they are wrong about almost everything.  Their assertion that striped roses are somehow intrinsically vulgar is utterly asinine; that's like arguing that tigers are in bad taste.  

​Nature knows what she's doing with those colour-break genes and she doesn't need critique from people in popped collars and taupe anything.
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​Scentimental it is, unfortunately.  Though I am baffled as to why.  I have sniffed this rose in a dozen settings and can report that there just isn't much worthwhile scent to speak of, and it's not like anyone who sees it in full bloom will give much of a toss what it smells like anyway.  To my reckoning, 'scent' must be consistently present and furthermore worthy of your nosetime to be rated as such; fucked-out pot pourri dust (as is the case here) doesn't count.  ​It may just be the particular bud material propagated in NZ, but as a sensory panel veteran I can faithfully declare this is not an anosmia.  It's hardly surprising, though- overselling scent is a rose breeder con driven spectacularly out of hand in the last few years by online sales.
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Lack of scent is just one of the reasons Floribundas deserve caution.  Despite their industrial remontance, too many are so objectively deficient in the rose's inherent virtues- beauty of flower form, fragrance and colour- that you're left scratching your damn head over why somebody bothered.  Let me assure you that Scentimental is a special case.

In our mild, often frost-free conditions this plant would roar away above 6 feet high and wide if I didn't prune to keep it around 5.  The leaves are typical of its class; flipper-esque, shiny and olive-leaning, furnished in tiers from top to bottom so it is fully dressed and doesn't suffer that horrid chicken-leg look.  There are large thorns placed irregularly toward the bottom of the canes but I had to go out and check on that, so they haven't really bothered me.

Scentimental's constitution is a straight 10/10.  It has been torture-tested; a few years back after being very carelessly ripped out of the ground on a hot day, almost shorn of its roots and dumped in half shade, this plant looked distinctly peri-mortem. 
On my return a couple of weeks later it had completely recovered and burst into another round of flowers. 

Its health, good form and performance are gobsmacking.  I mean, above left is a rose competing with Horse Chestnut roots and half day shade in early spring.  In these humid, no-spray conditions it resists rust almost completely and blackspot is never able to outshine its vigour; I can't recall seeing it more than 1/3 spotty, even in the very worst years.  Cane dieback is a bit of a problem here too among wimpier roses, but I don't think it's ever lost a single one.  

It's obvious that Scentimental draws its genes from a deep ancestral well of quality plants.  Its
 parents are Playboy and Peppermint Twist, both descended from generations of unkillable roses.  We need more like this.
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​Scentimental's blooms are produced in profusion, both clustered and individually (meaning there is always a decent number of picking prospects) over the entire plant.  Although slender, the stems support the blooms well with just enough nod to ease that awkward Floribunda brass neck stance.  They are quite Hybrid Tea-ish at first, their clean white liberally streaked with deep, vivid raspberry, the former dominating in shadier positions while the red will take over in full sun.  Few things are more lovely than a vase stuffed with an armful of Scentimental once they have opened out to reveal their generous eyes of pale golden stamens.  It flowers in lengthy pulses for me starting in late spring through to early winter, meaning it's a top choice for a position that needs prolonged and reliable impact.

Earlier stripeys like Commandant Beaurepaire and Ferdinand Pichard might have more refined individual flowers, strictly speaking.  Rosa Mundi might have more roguish vintage charm.  A number of modern striped roses promise more complex colour combinations.  But I grow CB, FP and RM and Scentimental pwns those guys by almost every criteria except fragrance.  And I can't even remember the number of modern striped varieties I've punted onto the compost heap after they've proven themselves inexcusably feeble.  

If you can reconcile yourself to the fact that striped roses are awesome and fancy just one for your own place, this is the plant to go for.  They're addictive, though, so make sure you have room for the rest of them.

See more of our new Rose Review category


Blackthorn Rose Review: Agnes (Rugosa Hybrid)

19/10/2018

 
(I've decided to finally get onto reviewing the hundred-plus varieties of roses that have cycled through our garden in the last 20 years, just because most reviews are generated by suppliers and thus pretty suspect to peeps worried about dropping thirty damn dollars on one bloody plant; just saying.  If this prospect bores you, too fucking bad.  Everyone should garden, where possible.  Your body needs the exercise.  Your brain needs the tranquility.  The dirt needs friends.  Roses and indeed most other plants are indisputably preferable to the company of most people and far better for you than that other shit you're doing.  Prove me wrong.)
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Agnes is a really odd sort of rose, a hybrid-looking thing with the wild-type foliage of one parent and the feral habit of the other.  The flower form resists effective classification too, seemingly stranded between Old Rose fluff and 70's Floribunda realness.  She doesn’t get a lot of love, perhaps due to this misc. look and the often whack nature of the label photos that always seem to misrepresent her.  She's a survivor, though, a flapper minted in 1922 from the wild roses Rugosa x  Foetida persiana.

​Agnes deserves far more attention.  Her hair is full of secrets.
Firstly and importantly, she is massively indestructible.  A bit of confessional background: despite their iron-clad reputation and for no obvious reason, I’ve managed to kill fully half of the Rugosa-derived varieties that I’ve planted and Agnes has been treated worst of all.  I have yanked it out of a range of shitty positions, from the almost complete shade and hungry competition of an encroaching Arrow Bamboo grove to the utterly indifferent, summer-baked clay of the slope it inhabits currently.  The only real change in Agnes’ performance has been more flowers in the brighter situation.  She seems to put on a good face even in those annoyingly seedy half shade/crap soil marginal areas.
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The foliage is pleasant bright emerald green and an attractive, atypical ferny cutwork look that is never bothered by pathogens.  I repeat: never bothered by pathogens.  I don’t spray for anything, ever, and while my other roses are being rusted and defoliated, Agnes never turns a hair and she should be grown in droves for that quality alone.  
The parent plant Foetida persiana is a notorious black spot magnet, so the clean Rugosa genes must prevail in this respect.

She puts forth modest, slender, tufted buds that open to a flower featuring gradations of buttermilk yellow with a slight mellony scent, the form puffy, informal and sort of scrunchy, like a looser Centifolia with tissue-thin petals.  There's a first late spring flush that goes on for about a month or so, then the odd single flower and a late summer rebloom, depending on the year although this second episode has become more reliable as the plant has matured. 
​
As a result of her wild heritage, the effect of Agnes’ foliage+blooms is uncommonly complimentary and wholly naturalistic, as though the two truely belong both together and within the wider fabric of an informal garden.  The colour and form just don't scream rose bush, yo, which is a bit of a shocker really after so long staring at the depressing clownishness of so many modern hybrids.
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Negatives?  Well, she does bristle with Gooseberry-like thorns, making her a great hedge prospect and a menace to the unwary.  The only other 'difficulty' I've encountered with Agnes is in regard to pruning, which usually means it's best to just put down the secateurs and back away from any impending hack job.  My cack-handed meddling has made her a wee bit flat-headed at the moment as you can probably see in the pic below, but I intend to leave her alone from now on in the hope she regains her original, more graceful Rugosa form.  Agnes may not knock you on your arse with her drag show, but there could not be a more low-maintenance, aesthetically sympathetic and uncomplaining rose.
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