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A ROSE PROPHECY FULFILLED, The Resurgence of the Hybrid Pepetual. By Humphrey Brooke. Published in Country Life magazine, November 19, 1981.
THAT extraordinary, neglected book, Roses and Rose Growing, (1908) by Rose Kingsley, has to this to say; “The pure pinks and rich crimsons and scarlets of the Hybrid Perpetuals are of surpassing beauty. And though there is a craze just now for Hybrid Teas, the Hybrid Perpetual must forever hold its own in the garden on its own lines. For it will flourish where the more tender race would die: and its magnificent size, colour, strong growth and rich foliage must always render it indispensable..."
To this list of virtues should be added scent, for the hybrid perpetual roses have so much damask blood in their ancestry. Where Miss Kingsley underrated the prospects of the HP was in their more limited range of colour. No HP of a yellowish tinge was ever raised. That colour first entered our bedding roses through the Tea (Rosa indica Odorata), that other ancestor of the HT. Ironically that other parent of tonalities still popular today—Pernet-Ducher's Soleil D'Or (1900)—also brought black spot into our gardens, as it was raised from Austrian Copper (Rosa lutea foetida Bicolor), a variety notorious for this complaint since the Middle Ages.
At Sangerhausen, the great rosarium in East Germany, with 6,300 rose varieties, what are termed "Lutea Hybrids" were all segregated to an isolation ward. Since then there has been no spraying in the main rosarium. I have eradicated all Lutea Hybrids from my garden at Lime Kiln, in Suffolk, and I do not spray.
When, in 1954 I started to grow roses on the Chalk of Lime Kiln, Hybrid Perpetuals were almost so forgotten a race that I had never heard of them. In 1956, by which time my initial planting of 50 HTs were all either dead or dying, chance took me to Rome in May, where I saw magnificent specimens of Rosa Rifuorente growing on the poor soil in municipal rose garden. Other specimens flourished in the British Embassy, and I owe it to the kindness of the British Ambassador, Sir Evelyn Shuckburgh, that he brought me cuttings of one I particularly admired—the pink and peony-like Rhum von Steinfurth (1917).
Graham Thomas's seminal book The Old Shrub Roses appeared in that year. This only referred to HPs in a confusion with the Portlands: Rose du Roi (1815) and Rose du Roi á Fleurs Pourpres (1819)—an omission corrected in his excellent Manual of Shrub Roses (various dates around 1960). This listed 29 HPs not inappropriately blended with the Bourbons. Several of his HPs appeared to be unobtainable and others, such as Roger Lambelin, were noted as requiring rich loam. This has proved correct.
That eminent rosarian, Miss Murrell, still listed 18 HPs in her nursery catalogue; several other growers were reduced to Fran Karl Druschki (1900), that scentless Snow Queen. From Miss Murrell I obtained those HPs that still thrived the best, including Baronne Prévost (1842), Reine de Violettes (1860), Empereur de Roc (1858), Fisher Holmes (1865), Gloire de Ducher (1865), Souvenir d'Alphonse Lavallée (1884), Mrs John Laing (1887), Ulrich Brunner (1882), Hugh Dickson (1905) and Ferdinand Pichard (1921).
That last was an introduction from California and "almost too good to be true... a perpetually flowering, globular flower with superb stripings of crimson-purple on a near white ground" (Thomas Rose Manual). At Lime Kiln, where Ferdinand Pichard has made two large bushes (not comparable in size with the one I saw at the Dowager Lady Galway's garden at Serlby, near Bawtry, South Yorkshire), this HP provokes more queries than any other rose.
Hybrid Perpetuals were the inventions of the French nurseryman Laffay, and are of very mixed parentage, since he is reported (Thomas Rivers, The Rose Amateur's Guide, 1840) as using 200,000 seedlings a year. His first notable introduction was Princèsse Hélène (1837), which remained in the lists for 50 years, but his first triumph was La Reine (1843), a globular flower in satin pink and violet on a strong bush. In my experience she opens badly except in full sun, and dislikes rain, but she is still a magnificent rose.
Laffay virtually retired in 1853, and his role was then taken over by a number of French nurseryman, including Lacharme and Vilbert, and our own William Paul (so excited by his first sight of La Reine that he nearly trod on another valuable seedling). The heyday of the HP was 1850-1885—a relatively brief reign. La France (1867), recognised as the first HT, was classed as an HP for 10 years.
Today with at least 100 HPs established at Castle Howard, near York, and about 70 available from Peter Beale's nursery at Swardeston, Norfolk, the fulfilment of Miss Rose Kingsley's prophesy is well underway.
Undoubtedly the principal pioneer has been Mr L A Wyatt of Teddington Middlesex, a former editor of The Rose, who combines both scholarship and taste. For years he sent out lists of "Roses lost and found" from which I extracted such prime beauties as Lacharme's Charles Lefebvre (1861), an HP of superb shape in the most brilliant scarlet and the exquisite Dupuy Jamain (1868).
Mr Wyatt's contribution to the 1981 Rose Annual , "The Hybrid Perpetual Roses—A Survey", is the most important I have come by. He makes one slip in stating that I bought back 30 HPs from Sangerhausen in 1973. My wife and I were the first British visitors there since the second world war, and we were entertained with coffee and cakes on arrival. It was a memorable experience. There were 300 varieties of HPs massed in one bed.
Two factors limited our choice. The Sangerhausen authorities only gave budwood for exchange, and Lime Kiln had only 12 novelties to promise in return, and there were so many other desirable varieties in the rosarium : Rose du Roi (and other Portlands), Rosa Bourboniana (which proved to be a gallica), early Chinas, two snow white climbers (Long John Silver and White Flight), the only repeat flowering multiflora rambler Ghislaine de Féligonde, and one or two very early HTs. Our list of HPs was reduced to not more than a dozen. More unluckily, those expert budders, Scotts of Merriot, Somerset, reported that due to two years of drought they had fared very badly with young stock. Fortunately I had given spare buds to castle Howard, in Yorkshire, and to them I owe the best of the dark reds - the HP Le Harve (1861). Even more fortunately the HP was my wife's and my special selection—the shapely, pure white and scented Baron Adolphe de Rothschild (1867) (the name has been disputed)—is one of the Sangerhausen HPs to have thrived with us, although it will be some years before I shall be able to furnish a promised bed outside her bedroom.
What I regard as my most important HP recovery (via Peter Beales) is the dark red, climbing rose against the wall of Woolverstone Church in Suffolk. In 1971 the village's oldest inhabitant, then 87, remembered it as a large bush when she first went to church at the age of five. This means it is almost certainly over 100 years old and rules out the only other HP climber, Ards Rover (1898). The Woolverstone rose may well date back to one of several climbing HPs introduced by William Paul in his nursery at Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, in the late 1860s. It has the richest possible scent. There is no example at Sangerhausen, and I have named it Surpassing Beauty of Woolverstone.
HPs are easy to grow. Mine are planted in topsoil, peat and leafmould dug into holes in the solid chalk, cut about 18in deep, with bonemeal scattered above. They are never pruned, sprayed or fussed in any way. A few get a forkfull of manure in alternate years. The taller varieties are best pegged down, or hooped over, so that flowering shoots will appear along each shoot.
The most effective example of this that I have known is at Barham Hall, near Ipswich, Suffolk. Here the pegging down is done by trying down to wires, and the effect is spectacular. My Reine de Violettes and Mrs John Laing have carried over 250 blooms in 10 square feet. Hybrid Teas would not respond in that way. A bed of Ulrich Brunner, pegged down, was the most conspicuous sight at Sissinghurst Castle, in Kent, many years ago.
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