Rose gardeners from around the country have revealed their favourite roses. In the recently launched 176-page book, Veld, Vlei & Rose Gardens: Inspiration from South African Gardeners (available online from Otterley Press), the authors, Sheenagh Harris and Jacqueline Kalley, asked the owners of the top 41 rose gardens in the country to write about their rose gardens.
The results make for absolutely fascinating reading and show that roses, like any other decor accessory, follow a fashion. In general, it would appear that the shades of fashionable roses in Joburg’s northern suburbs are getting paler and paler. There are simply no top rose gardens filled with screaming orange, electric red or wild gold roses.
Instead, roses in pastel shades reign supreme in the northern suburbs, and the fashionable names of pale pink, yellow and white roses keep coming up. By far the most popular container roses are the pale pink and white granny roses (My Granny, Granny Dearest and Granny’s Delight).
Joburg’s top rose gardeners tell you about their favourites:
McAllister garden
Lindy McAllister’s garden in Bryanston comes alive in October when more than 2 000 roses designed into various rooms in the garden are at their flowering peak. Assisted by landscaper Karen Gardelli, McAllister has a passion for very pale pastel-coloured to white roses which are planted up in terracotta pots, a formal French-inspired rose garden, archways and raised borders throughout her garden.
Her own rose, Linda Anne, named in her honour, is a delicate porcelain pink hybrid tea with a quartered centre of a deeper pink hue and a slight but distinct scent. The two examples of Moonlight Panarosa on a pergola covered with wisteria and on a trellised screen in the garden provide ample evidence that this is one of the most spectacular pale yellow pillar and trellis roses ever bred.
In McAllister’s pale to pastel palette of roses you will find Clever Gretel, Fay’s Folly, Andrew’s Comfort, My Granny, Elina, Granny’s Delight, Garden and Home and Granny Dearest. The pale pink cascading Albertine rose also contrasts dramatically against the dark flagstones and pool.
Hogan House
Interior decorator Michael Hogan’s garden has superb composition, colour, texture and scale – as you would find in any top interior design. His 500 superb roses lie behind a black natural pond filled with indigenous fish, and for this reason, he has chosen a theatrical amalgam of pink and lilac shades for his rose garden.
The rose garden contains large clusters of pale pink Garden Queen, Silver Anniversary and Clever Gretal. “Garden Queen, in my opinion, is simply the best garden rose: it produces fantastic highly-scented blooms that are as large as dinner plates,” says Hogan.
Beechwood
Christopher Grieg’s formal rose garden on the stately Beechwood property in Hyde Park lies in a beautiful sunken garden 2m below the rest of the garden. Divided into twelve beds lined with clipped buxus, the garden is filled with roses in pastel shades.
Grieg’s favourite roses include Garden and Home, Spiced Coffee, Penguin, Greensleeves, Brümilda van Rensburg, Table Mountain, Professor Piet Hoek and Roberto Cupucci. Terracotta pots around the garden contain Johannesburg Garden Club, My Granny and Granny Dearest.
What tips can Grieg offer to gardeners? “As an avid nature conservationist, I am strongly against any form of insecticide… The birds eat the insects and so the delicate ecological balance is maintained.”
Cleveland Lodge
Shirley Wallington, Talk Radio 702’s resident landscaping expert, assisted Colette Ball in the development of a new rose garden at Cleveland Lodge in Sandton. The roses in this garden are bordered with white trelliswork and what Ball describes as the “ever-dependable Iceberg roses”.
The roses in the formal garden are planted in ascending height. Starting with the diminutive My Granny, the rose garden includes the pale pinks of Pearl of Bedfordview and Adele Searl to the salmon pinks of Addo Heritage and Myra Stegman, the cerise of Magaliesberg and the red of Oklahoma.
Ball’s tip: “One rose that has performed consistently is Addo Heritage.“
Veld, Vlei & Rose Gardens: Inspiration from South African Gardeners by Sheenagh Harris and Jacqueline Kalley. Available in top book stores or online from Otterley Press. Call 082 924 5892 or 011 442 7863 or visit www.otterley.com - Saturday Star