More Ms Graham T
Also from Mottisfont. The big drawback to rose photos is they don’t bring you the fragrance. Ms Graham has a lovely what Austin calls myrrh or tea smell*; I don’t think she smells like myrrh or tea but I don’t know what to call it instead. I do find it rather intriguing and mysterious, so maybe it is something like myrrh after all.** It seems to me a not at all standard rose smell, but an American friend visiting us at the old house said of Constance Spry***, who has the same not-myrrh not-tea smell, Oh! That’s what a rose ought to smell like.
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* There’s a solemn growing subcategory of Rose Nerd which is Rose Fragrance Nerd. Its expression is getting as bad as wine writing.
** It’s still not a tea smell. Nothing about the way Ms Graham smells reminds me of staggering around in the morning groping for things and moaning.
*** http://www.davidaustinroses.com/english/showrose.asp?showr=4262
Graham Thomas is also a yellow rose
Right. I was going to post some photos to go with my Old Mr Roses entry a few nights back and . . . got distracted.* So this is Graham Thomas. At Mottisfont, where this photo was taken, they have her** planted in drifts in the big courtyard that leads to the gate of the walled garden that is the human Mr Thomas’ masterpiece.
She has done extremely well for David Austin***; I’m not sure, she may even be the rose that put him on the map as a rose breeder; he’d been around for a while but she may have been his success fou. She was certainly the yellow Austin rose for quite a few years –including when I moved over here and started growing roses–and while she has theoretically been supplanted by later Austin yellows in practise there are still a lot of people growing her.
As I keep saying, I’m not the biggest fan of the Austin roses, but I seem to grow kind of a lot of them anyway.† When I moved into the cottage I did buy a Comte de Champagne, which is a new Austin yellow, because . . . well, really. I had to, didn’t I? And she is very pretty. †† But, having not thought huge amounts of the Graham Thomas I had at the old house, I found myself being sort of dimly aware of a Yellow That Wasn’t There. But there are so many things that aren’t there when you move from a two and a quarter acre garden to a handkerchief garden it’s like, so? Queue forms to the right. And then I walked past a rack or rank of Graham Thomases all nicely potted up at a garden centre and . . .
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* I should have a dedicated ‘I got distracted’ short cut key so I can stop typing it out every time. The frequency I’d use it, all those seconds would mount up and I could, I don’t know, make chocolate chip cookies or ride Connie in the time saved.
** Remember that in my world all roses are she
*** What flipping is this! The dadblatted Austin site doesn’t list year of introduction/copyright dates! What is that about!
† They’re so effing ubiquitous. And I have a lot of trouble escaping a rose nursery^ without buying something.
^ No of course I can’t just drive past. My only hope is to find another way to get to wherever it is I’m going that doesn’t pass any rose nurseries.
†† Ratbags. I’m not sure I’ve got a good picture of her. Next year. Meanwhile:
This rose is named after Taittinger’s finest champagne. The president of Taittinger, M Claude Taittinger, is a descendant of Thiabaut IV, Count of Champagne and Brie and who introduced R. gallica Officinalis (The Apothecary’s Rose) from
Taittinger. No wonder I like her.