ROSES I Want

Sweet Briar Rose 

Known as the "Sweet Briar Rose" because of the strongly apple-scented leaves, this is a favorite English native that has been recorded in literature from Chaucer to Shakespeare. R. eglanteria, or 'Eglanteria', has been common in cottage gardens on both sides of the Atlantic because it is not only hardy but always fragrant, whether or not it is in bloom. The rambling shrub is large, thorny, and vigorous with dark green, slightly rough foliage. Spring flowers are pink with five petals and have a good rose fragrance of their own. R. eglanteria should be part of every fragrance garden. Rain, wind and sun all seem to bring out the perfume of the plant. If supported as a climber, it could reach 10 to 15 feet.

Old Blush

old rose

Touted to be the rose that inspired the Thomas Moore poem 'Last Rose of Summer' (though some experts dispute that based on the timeline), it is easy to see the reasoning, as this rose is a reliable and continuous bloomer that does continue to bloom into the Dog Days long after others have surrendered to the sweltering heat and humidity.

R. X RICHARDII

a gallica rose

Wild Rose

This is the rose that Thomas Christopherson talks about in his book in Search of Lost Roses. It was excavated from a burial ground by Flinders Petrie in the form of a head wreath. It is also called "the Holy Rose of Abyssinia" and was still used in the 1800s in Coptic Christian churchyards. 

Seven Sisters

rambler

• Both this rose and R. multiflora carnea were painted by Redouté in France and both are frequently found in early Texas gardens. By the effort that it took to transport them through the intervening miles, those early settlers have left their own testimony about the need for beauty in even the most rugged human existence. ‘Seven Sisters’ is named for the variety of colors that can appear in each cluster of flowers, ranging from carmine through purple, mauve, pink, and cream as the flowers fade.
• Named for the seven shades that can be seen at any one time. Big clusters of double, typical Multiflora flowers, which gradually develop from deep cerise to pale mauve and later ivory white. Strong fruity fragrance. Free-flowering and strong growing. 1815.

Mock Orange-Philadelphus

Jane, as you know, mentioned lots of plants which she knew and loved, in her letters, and we have: “Laburnum rich, in streaming gold; Syringa Iv’ry pure” – she meant Philadelphus, or Mock Orange here.

Writing to her sister during the month of May [1811] she says: “The whole of the shrubbery border will soon be very gay with pinks and sweet-williams, in addition to the columbines already in bloom. The syringas (mock oranges), too, are coming out. . . . You cannot imagine – it is not in human nature to imagine – what a nice walk we have round the orchard. The rows of beech look very well indeed, and so does the young quickset hedge in the garden. I hear to-day that an apricot has been detected on one of the trees.” Was it a “Moor Park,” we wonder, such as Mrs. Norris and Dr. Grant quarrelled over?

Candytuft

Of the garden current vistors to Chawton will find, former curator Jean Bowden wrote in 1990,
“The garden at Jane Austen’s house is a joy to me… I am trying to grow plants which were introduced into England before Jane died in 1817, especially old shrub roses…I also sow old-fashioned annuals each year… like Love-in-the-Mist, Larkspur, cornflowers and Candytuft. Luckily, Columbines seed themselves all round the village – a nice very dark red one, almost black, and we also have some pink ones and pure white ones. Jane mentions Sweet Williams (Dianthus) and I grow these too, but they are more trouble as they are biennials and need replacing every other year.

Cornflowers-Bachelor's Buttons

Of the garden current vistors to Chawton will find, former curator Jean Bowden wrote in 1990,
“The garden at Jane Austen’s house is a joy to me… I am trying to grow plants which were introduced into England before Jane died in 1817, especially old shrub roses…I also sow old-fashioned annuals each year… like Love-in-the-Mist, Larkspur, cornflowers and Candytuft. Luckily, Columbines seed themselves all round the village – a nice very dark red one, almost black, and we also have some pink ones and pure white ones. Jane mentions Sweet Williams (Dianthus) and I grow these too, but they are more trouble as they are biennials and need replacing every other year.

Love-In-a-Mist

Of the garden current vistors to Chawton will find, former curator Jean Bowden wrote in 1990,
“The garden at Jane Austen’s house is a joy to me… I am trying to grow plants which were introduced into England before Jane died in 1817, especially old shrub roses…I also sow old-fashioned annuals each year… like Love-in-the-Mist, Larkspur, cornflowers and Candytuft. Luckily, Columbines seed themselves all round the village – a nice very dark red one, almost black, and we also have some pink ones and pure white ones. Jane mentions Sweet Williams (Dianthus) and I grow these too, but they are more trouble as they are biennials and need replacing every other year.

Sweetbriar Roses

Our garden is putting in order by a man who bears a remarkably good character, has a very fine complexion, and asks something less than the first. The shrubs which border the gravel walk, he says, are only sweetbriar and roses, and the latter of an indifferent sort; we mean to get a few of a better kind, therefore, and at my own particular desire he procures us some syringas. I could not do without a syringa, for the sake of Cowper’s line. We talk also of a laburnum. The border under the terrace wall is clearing away to receive currants and gooseberry bushes, and a spot is found very proper for raspberries.
Jane Austen to Cassandra
February 8, 1807

sweetbriar

 noun

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sweet·​bri·​ar | \ ˈswēt-ˌbrī(-ə)r  \

variants: or sweetbrier

Definition of sweetbriar

: an Old World rose (especially Rosa eleganteria) with stout recurved prickles and white to deep rosy-pink single flowers

— called also eglantine

Camellias

Camellias figured prominently in The Optimist's Daughter, as "Laurel's eye travelled among the urngs that marked the graves of the McKelvas and saw the favorite camellia of her father's, the old-fashioned Chandlerii Elegans, that he had planted on her mother's grave—big now as a pony, saddled with unplucked bloom living and dead, standing on a fading carpet of its own flowers."

Camellia japonicas bloom underneath Eudora’s bedroom window. Second shrub from left is the variety ‘Lady Clare’, a name she gave to a character in her novel Delta Wedding.