MORE ROSES FOR THE SOUTHERN GARDEN; Cultivating Poetry Along With Plants
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| Rosa 'Lady of Shalott,' a David Austin English rose that bloomed in my garden for the first time |
Extremes of weather are common where I live, meaning that even the most adaptive plants may struggle to perform. This year a hard winter characterized by single-digit lows and frequent storms gave way to a mild, wet spring that brought on growth quickly. Unfortunately for the plants that flower in May (the vast majority, of course) this period of growth was followed by a dry spell coupled with high heat, conditions that discouraged all but the hardiest growers. The result has been a shortage of bloom. My bearded iris were a complete write-off this season: out of perhaps a hundred sturdy rhizomes, exactly ONE stunted flower opened fully on one variety, despite the irises' well-drained, sunny location in alkaline soil combined with the same feeding and cultivation program they received last year when the plants were blooming their hearts out.
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| Rosa 'Madame Alfred Carriere,' a climber |
And the roses, which flower in such frothy
abandon in good years, were plagued by bud
blast this spring, that troublesome, wet-weather fungus that causes fully formed buds to
dry up and fall off the plant before opening. This disease can be treated with a strong
fungicide, but it is very hard to control considering the amount of surface
tissue that has to be sprayed and the re-applications that must be made after heavy downpours. I do my best to cut the affected buds away
and clean up leaf litter, as the fungus spores will overwinter and the disease will return with favorable conditions, but I can't prevent the rain from falling! Since most OGRs (Old Garden Roses) bloom only once in a season, there's not much you can do when the buds have been destroyed except hope for better
weather conditions next year.
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| Bud blast on R. 'Celestine Forestier' |
Bud blast
plagued nearly all my classes of roses this spring, from David Austin teas to vintage ramblers
and floribundas like R.
'Veilchenblau.' The exception was species
roses, like the swamp rose, Rosa
palustris scandens. I missed the
peak bloom for my large swamp rose this May, being gone for a week on a road trip to
Mississippi. However, I saw a beautiful
specimen of that rose in the one-acre garden at The Hermitage, Andrew and
Rachel Jackson's preserved homestead outside Nashville, Tennessee. Giant pink peonies and mock orange were also
blooming on my visit there, with nary a blasted bud in sight.
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| R. palustris scandens, the American swamp rose, blooms in the garden at Pres. Andrew Jackson's estate in Tennessee, The Hermitage |
It's a good
thing that several of the earlier blooming roses in my garden got in a fairly good show
before the botrytis took hold. It's not a species rose, but my R. "Yellow Knock-Out" may be
as bullet-proof as a modern hybrid gets.
This 5 x 5' shrub is cloaked with butter-yellow buds in April that open into lemony single flowers. The second flush of bloom was not as healthy, but it still performed better than many of the roses with impressive pedigrees.
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| R. 'Yellow Knock-Out' |
A rose that
bloomed for the first time in the garden this spring was the thornless Bourbon
climber, R. 'Zepherine Drouhin'
(1868). I found her in Charlotte NC at
Wing Haven last spring, and she has twined herself according to plan around the
stair-rail leading from the back deck to the garden, offering up richly ruffled blossoms
of dark pink with a light raspberry fragrance.
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| R. 'Zepherine Drouhin,' a climber, bloomed for the first time in my garden |
Planted at the
same time was R. 'Cadenza,' a tough
climber for a challenging site on the upper boundary of my garden, a place
where the mid-summer sun scalds any plant trying to grow in the unimproved
clay. Cadenza's scarlet flowers are easy
to spot from more comfortable perches in the shade, and her strong, thorny
canes are not put off by the sun or by the chain link fence.
In mid-April,
during a short-lived period between downpours when we were still on
frost-watch, I made my annual trip down-state to the rose nursery where I've
purchased plants in years past. However,
I think this will be my last trip to the nursery for the time being, as more
and more of the plants in the greenhouse are set aside for special customers
and are not for sale, leaving little stock to shop for.
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| R. 'Cadenza' also made her debut |
Additionally, among the three roses I settled
on was a climber which I allowed a staffer to select for me. Once I got the plants home and studied each
one closely before putting them in the cold frame I realized that the climber's
stem was infected by a fungus; it snapped off easily in my hand. Rule #1: if you are an experienced gardener,
there is no excuse for buying a plant you have not inspected carefully, from
the tips of its leaves to the bottom of its root ball! I'm kicking myself for not having gotten up
close and nosy before packing the plants in the 4-Runner for the long drive
home.
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| R. 'Veilchenblau,' before bud blast set in |
Considering
how carelessly I made my purchases, I'm lucky that the other selections proved
more durable. One was a conversation
piece, the old-fashioned Green Rose (1845), usually listed as Rosa chinensis viridiflora, but which I've seen in vintage guides identified
as Rosa monstrosa, so named, I assume,
because its green flower more closely resembles an alien insect than it does a
traditional rose blossom. The Green Rose
stays small, so it can be kept in a container on a patio where your friends
will be sure to ask "what is THAT???" when they see it. I bought this one with the purpose of marking
a friend's milestone birthday. I was
surprised and pleased to learn that my friend, an accomplished organic
gardener, had never before laid eyes on a monstrosa.
Apparently, there are new things under the sun.
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| The Green Rose |
For myself, I was happy to end my nursery stint in April by hunting down the one R. 'Lady of Shalott' not already marked 'SOLD.' With the heat so formidable already, it's potted for now, but I plan to add this rose permanently to my literary garden. This garden is still very much in the formative stages, with Rosa 'Jude the Obscure' and Narcissus 'Barrett Browning' the only members thriving in the collection so far. 'Shalott' is a David Austin English rose, so I know I am taking a risk with it in my punishing South Carolina climate (my beloved 'Jude' was badly affected by bud blast this spring), but I couldn't resist. DA named the rose for the Tennyson Society, which is celebrating the 200th anniversary of the poet's birth.
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| Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
Not only is Tennyson's poem one of my favorite Victorian ballads, one I used to squeeze into the English 102 curriculum when I was still teaching college literature, but the rose itself is magnificent: a blowsy, peony-sized explosion of tangerine color and richly sculpted petals. It puts me in mind of another gifted poet's lines, those of Emily Dickinson, writing about one of the beloved roses in her Amherst, Massachusetts, garden: "I had rather dwell like her/Than be "Duke of Exeter" --/Royalty enough for me/To subdue the bumblebee." (Poem 968) Since the Lady's fragrance is mild, scent is not the main reason to grow this plant, but I needed a pillar rose for a particular spot and at 4 feet wide by 8 feet tall, this shrub will suit very well, especially with those bumblebee-subduing blossoms.
I have written
here before about the importance of names when selecting roses ("Roses in the Southern Garden," 5-23-13), while apologizing to Shakespeare for contradicting
his claim that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." This continues to be quite true for me. While
I was willing to ditch David Austin's R.
'Graham Thomas' several years ago when it shed every one of its leaves come August,
it would take much more than total nudity on Jude the Obscure's part to make
me chuck him.
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| R. 'Jude the Obscure,' in the morning rain |
That's because Hardy's
novels were a huge influence on me while I was becoming an adult, and I believe that
influence continues to affect my creative imagination. Every time I bury my nose in one of those
creamy cabbage roses with the center like a peach cupcake, I am transported to
the 'Wessex' countryside. I can see the
lanes and villages where Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead trudged in search of some
better way to live and to be, and I imagine the shabby rented rooms where their
dreams, and their family, ended in a cupboard.
("Done because we are too
menny.")
I'm sure this
strikes some people as far-fetched, not to mention that it's a morbid association
for such a beautiful rose. However, for me the transitory nature of the flower's
beauty is counter-balanced by the enduring quality of the great literature which
it conjures. You probably don't need me
to tell you that this is not an original idea.
Will Shakespeare expressed it memorably in his celebrated Sonnet 18, as
well as in a coxcomb-full of other poems and plays: "...But
thy eternal summer shall not fade/Nor lose possession of that fair thou
ow'st;/Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,/When in eternal lines
to time thou grow'st.'
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| R. 'Souvenir du Docteur Jamain, with clematis seedhead |
In Tennyson's
poem, "The Lady of Shalott," an artistic young woman in King Arthur's
time has been cursed for some unknown reason, and is condemned to live in a hut
on an island where she is set to weaving a magic web upon a loom. She may only view the world in the face of
the mirror that stands beside her loom; if she attempts to join the world and engage
with the people in it she will die.
Despite knowing this, the woman sees Lancelot reflected in her mirror
as he rides along the riverbank and immediately falls in love with him, leaving
her hut and leaping into a boat in an attempt to follow the knight to Camelot.
"She left the web, she left the loom
She made three paces through the room
She saw the water lily bloom
She saw the helmet and the plume
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
"The curse is come upon
me," cried
The Lady of Shalott."
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| The Lady of Shalott, painted by John William Waterhouse, 1888 |
The boat sinks, of course, and the lady sinks with it slowly,
singing her own haunting dirge to the end.
While the courtiers gathered at Camelot crowd the water's edge to
witness the spectacle, the handsome knight barely notices the tumult. The only
comment he makes about the drowning woman is that "She has a lovely face/ God in his mercy lend her grace."
When I was an
undergraduate, I kept taped to my bedroom wall a reproduction of John William
Waterhouse's 1888 painting of the lady, which depicts her setting out in the boat
with the knowledge of her doom already contorting her pale face. I purchased it
at the Tate in London when I was sixteen; I came away from that museum with my
romantic sensibilities fully inflamed by the pre-Raphaelite painters, several
of whom painted portraits of Tennyson's enchanted lady. These artists were influenced by the same
revival of medieval themes and ideals that had inspired the poet forty years
earlier and that guided William Morris when he was formulating design
principles for the Arts & Crafts movement.
I'm sure the tale influenced my
subconscious sufficiently to compel me to write a play when I was barely out of
college about another weaving heroine, the virtuous wife who waits twenty
years for Odysseus to come back to her. In Homer's Odyssey, Penelope
attempts to placate her horde of aggressive suitors by telling them she will select one
to be her husband when she finishes weaving a tapestry on her loom; however,
every night she unravels the work she has done by day, so that the weaving
never progresses. (What I didn't realize until years later was that J.W. Waterhouse painted Penelope, as well. Penelope and her Suitors was completed in 1912, near the end of his career.)
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| R. 'Henri Matisse' |
It's easy to
see why "The Lady of Shalott" resonated so strongly for women poets and writers coming of age in the latter
part of the 20th century. Tennyson's
heroine abandons her own ideals and creative work (the 'web') for the love of a
man who barely acknowledges her existence, much less her sacrifice. Although she pre-dated the feminist movement
by several years, the American poet Sylvia Plath (a Fulbright scholar to
Oxford) was clearly influenced by the poem.
She penned "The Mirror" not long after her husband, the poet
Ted Hughes, left her and their two young children for one of Sylvia's
friends, and shortly before she put her head in the oven of her flat in London
and committed suicide in the winter of 1963.
"Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,/ Searching my reaches
for what she really is." As a college freshman
I performed in a dramatic adaptation of a Plath poem in the university's
theater department, as Plath was all the rage among female students like
myself, who took ourselves and our responsibilities as artists VERY
seriously. Hence the 'Lady' poster, and
the play championing Penelope.
In the Odyssey, the dueling gods finally allow Odysseus to return home to Ithaca where he promptly slaughters Penelope's mooching suitors, reuniting with his son Telemachus and his long-suffering wife. Then they settle down to live many happy years together. In my retelling, however, which starts where Homer's tale ends, I sought to dramatize how Penelope confronts the fact that after two decades coping on her own she is no longer the submissive girl she was when she married and her husband is not the man she idealized for all those years. She begins to understand, as we all do eventually, that LOVE is an ideal -- like freedom. Honor. Beauty. Truth. We are shaped and informed by our aspirations toward these ideals, but at some point we must accept realistic manifestations of the concepts or live without them; otherwise, we will find ourselves leading unhappy and dissatisfied lives. I think this is what it means to grow up. To be in the world, rather than haunting it.).
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| Sylvia Plath |
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| Penelope and Her Suitors, by John William Waterhouse, 1912 |
It may seem
silly that so many long-held memories, images, passions, beliefs, myths and lines of
poetry should flicker to life in one's brain with a simple tactile stimulus:
the act of stroking a downy, flame-colored rose petal between one's fingers. Maybe that's why as I grow older my garden
gains in value -- it as much a repository for my world as it is for my plants.
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| Southern white peony and R. 'Zepherine Drouhin' in a window |
MORE SOURCES
If you have the right conditions for David Austin's English
roses, and if you have a literary bent, DA offers many varieties named for
characters or literary works, with nods to Chaucer, Shakespeare, A. E. Housman,
and more (Wife of Bath, Othello, A Shropshire Lad, Wise Portia, etc.). For information and photos, go to:David Austin Roses
To read all 19 stanzas of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem
"The Lady of Shalott" (1842), as well as his 1833 version, go to: Text of Lady of Shalott
To read the poem "The Mirror" (1963) by Sylvia
Plath, go to: Text of The Mirror
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