A Rose would be a Rose by any other name. Roses: do you grow them?

 Here it is.

My favourite flower.

Ever since I can remember I have adored roses, in all forms and shapes (yes, even those garish orange ones that have no smell), but especially the English blowsy scented ones like the one in the photo.

My Mum used to grow pale yellow ones in borders, masses and masses of them, and red climbing ones against the (whitewashed) walls of their old house. Every year they were pruned and mulched with horse manure (we kept a  horse, so plenty of it). Our old dog used to scrape out nice comfy holes underneath them, and so did our free ranging chickens, and the roses didn't mind. They bloomed and thrived.

When we bought our present house twenty-one years ago, one of the first things we planted in our derelict wasteland of a plot outside was a climbing rose, a New Dawn.

We bought it only 30 cm. high, and within one season it grew to a stunning 2.50 m long, absolutely covered in blooms.

We've changed our garden around 100% since then (due to the extension we've built into the garden at the place where the New Dawn used to be), but I dug out an old photo for you.

There is the New Dawn right at the right of the photo, and the white climbing rose "Snow White" in the foreground on the left. This too, grew metres long within the first year of planting. It was an issue with my (then) neighbour though, as the blooms all blew into her garden and she was the one who had to sweep them all up every day. So after a year or two of putting up with her grumbles about it, we dug it up and replanted it on the other side of the garden. Here is the proof, in a little posy I made last Summer

These days I have many different kinds of roses. At the moment they are just coming into leaf, but I promise I'll take photos of them for a future blog when they are in flower.

Do you like roses? And which ones do you grow?