my own plant, currently about 1m tall It's the middle of bloody winter and so frosty in town this morning as we walked through the skeletal Bot Gardens rose ghetto that I feel the need to remind myself of the season to come. I just picked up a 'Sophie's Perpetual' China x during the obligatory Saturday nursery visit, so let's have a squiz at a few roses from the Blackthorn garden. I'll do a short series over the next few weeks.
SCENTIMENTAL (floribunda) Lame punned names are usually the best way to get me dropping a rose fairly smartly back onto the shelf during a nursery sale and I really wish breeders would cut that shit out. I also wish they would stop making completely spurious claims about scent. Scentimental is not particularly scented at all, having that vague, slightly plasticky floribunda smell but I am a sucker for a striped rose and in this respect she does certainly deliver, being possibly the most robust of the modern stripeys, in my experience.
Bears large trusses of medium-sized blooms that vary in their colour ratio with the season and daytime temps, though my flowers tend to be white-dominant (see above) in the position it's in. She appreciates a sunny, even exposed position where she can extend and really go mad with the floral production. Like most floribundas she is undemanding and will grow happily even when crowded from below.
Relatively disease free; doesn't last very long in the vase so just leave the blooms on the bush and appreciate them there. I find that achieving a nice shape is more a matter of cutting off the spent trusses at the correct point (just above the first set of 'real' fully-formed leaves) than hacking it hard in winter. This year I will reduce it by less than a third just to keep the bush balanced.
SCENTIMENTAL (floribunda) Lame punned names are usually the best way to get me dropping a rose fairly smartly back onto the shelf during a nursery sale and I really wish breeders would cut that shit out. I also wish they would stop making completely spurious claims about scent. Scentimental is not particularly scented at all, having that vague, slightly plasticky floribunda smell but I am a sucker for a striped rose and in this respect she does certainly deliver, being possibly the most robust of the modern stripeys, in my experience.
Bears large trusses of medium-sized blooms that vary in their colour ratio with the season and daytime temps, though my flowers tend to be white-dominant (see above) in the position it's in. She appreciates a sunny, even exposed position where she can extend and really go mad with the floral production. Like most floribundas she is undemanding and will grow happily even when crowded from below.
Relatively disease free; doesn't last very long in the vase so just leave the blooms on the bush and appreciate them there. I find that achieving a nice shape is more a matter of cutting off the spent trusses at the correct point (just above the first set of 'real' fully-formed leaves) than hacking it hard in winter. This year I will reduce it by less than a third just to keep the bush balanced.
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