Meetings with plants: Rose ‘Ballerina’

Bramble & Briar #120

Introducing you to the plants in my garden

Rosa ‘Ballerina’ half way through her first flush

So disparaging, don’t you think? When some charmer describes a person – an invariably younger person, but perhaps one no longer quite young – as someone in whom “the first flush of youth has passed”. The one doing the describing will almost certainly have seen the back not only of the first flush of youth, but all the successive flushes of early life, as well as having bestowed both greetings and farewells to the flushes of middle age and possibly, not so much the first flush as the deep, rosy burnishings of decrepitude. And yet, when it comes to the gardening year, the passing of the first flush of the remontant roses is a sad occasion for any of us to observe. I’m having to face up to the fact that the moment has arrived. Was that flush shorter this year? Barely a month, I think, from the first rose into bloom – almost certainly the deep red ‘Étoile de Hollande’ on Shed #2, that reliably comes out right before Chelsea – to where we are now, a point where last weekend’s wind and rain battered one brave rose after another, but prompted very few replacement buds, no matter how earnestly I might have been dead heading. Even the Generous Gardener seems to be experiencing a temporarily halt to their abundance.

P)pretending to be hydrangea, along with ox-eye daisies and a penstemon pretending to be a foxglove

At a rough count, there are twenty-two different roses here, most of them identified, and most now done, or almost done, for the next few weeks. And Ballerina will take a break, too... just not yet. She likes to have the last word, and I’m more than happy to let her chatter away to herself long after her relatives have settled down for a snooze, popping out an abundance of pinky white, pink and white, single, open flowers. If not quite unstoppable, there are weeks in the year where you think she might be – just as the colour starts to fade from her impressive display, she holds up another coronet of buds, and goes again. So floriferous is she, and so unrosy her trusses, it’s not unusal for her to be mistaken for a hydrangea.

Long may she bloom. Now, off to give twenty-two roses a good drink and a little seaweed tonic, while they muster their energies for the next round.

Rosa ‘Ballerina’ with plenty more in bud