The rose garden at
Mottisfont Abbey is open on selected days from the first of April to the 31st of October. Mottisfont is famous for its rose collection which includes all the roses Graham Stuart Thomas, discovered, preserved and made popular in his writings.
In
The Art of Gardening with Roses, Graham Stuart Thomas writes about the roses and their companion plantings at Mottisfont. There is the First Rose Garden and the Second Rose Garden.
On page 15 of
A Book of Gardening: Ideas, Methods, Designs, by Penelope Hobhouse, there is a photograph which shows the box hedging that contains the beds of old shrub roses in the walled garden at Mottisfont Abbey.
[From
A Book of Gardening: Idea, Designs, Methods, by Penelope Hobhouse, p. 132-3:] The nearest approach to an early-nineteenth-century rose garden is the collection at Mottisfont Abbey...there are 300 different rose cultivars... Mottisfont is an all season garden but the rose collection is best seen in June... [p. 288:] Mottisfont is one of the largest and most impressive of the Trust's National Collections, that of old roses dating from before 1900. These were assembled by the Trust's former Gardens Adviser, Mr. Graham Stuart Thomas, and are mainly French in origin. They provide a spectacular and sweetly scented display in the walled garden through late June and early July.
[From
A Heritage of Old Roses, by Hazel le Rougetel, p. 135:] The majority of each class is planted together; for example the Hybrid Rugosas are in the bed on the right near the entrance and a splendid collection of Hybrid Perpetuals in two long borders along the far side. The walls are clothed with Climbers, and Ramblers are decoratively grown over archways and up pillars.
Photograph by Lisa Osta
