My most favourite rose of all time

Dear Reader

This stunning rose is Lady Emma Hamilton. It is the best rose ever I think!


https://www.davidaustinroses.co.uk/lady-emma-hamilton

I bought mine from David Austin Roses - link above.

I bought it last year and have fallen in love with it. I've a lot of lovely roses, some with fantastic scents in my garden but this is the most beautiful and has the best scent of all. It is named after the mistress of Lord Nelson!

It is the most gorgeous blend of colours. I usually go for things like blush pink roses, lavender, catmint, and generally pastel shades in my garden - this is an unusual choice for me but it looks stunning with the colours I already have.

It leaves are a wonderful colour - you can just make them out in the picture, I'm not sure how to describe the colour but there is dark green, red and bronze in there!

The scent is just wonderful its like marmalade and citrus. I picked a bloom and put it on the dash of my car just as we were heading off carpacking  in the wilds of the NW coast of Scotland. For a week I could bury my nose in it and enjoy the scent which lasted, unchanged for at least a week.

Its repeat flowering, its leaves are still on the plant and its mid January. It has good disease resistance and certainly has been looking healthy in my garden. It has won an award of garden merit from the Royal Horticultural Society. It also won 1st Prize for its fragrance in the Prix International at the Nantes trials in France. I think it richly deserves these awards and I hope it got to go to the ceremonies and had a good tea afterwards.

I do hope you try it out in your garden

Caroline
x



To learn more about me please visit
https://sites.google.com/site/carolinescottagegardens/


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Key words - rose scent "cottage gardens" best perfect "English rose" "david Austin" "recommended rose"

In praise of catmint - stunning combined with herbs and roses.

Good morning

Hope you slept well.

I've always resisted buying catmint - I imagined it smelled bad and had visions of it encouraging cats to roll all over my garden.

How wrong I was. I bought some last year for the first time and this year I'm going to take lots and lots of cuttings and dot it around my cottage garden. It flowered right up to mid December and now in early January it still has good foliage to add winter interest to my cottage garden border. The multitude of cats I imagined were no where to be seen and the smell whilst not the best if you squash the leaves and stick your nose into it, from any other perspective is non existent.

The leaves are a delicate grey green which go so well with herbs like rosemary, thyme, purple sage and lavender. Catmint looks wonderful with most  delicately coloured roses such as those from David Austin but particularly with delicate blush roses like Penelope. I have the above combination of flowers in my cottage garden border at the front of my house.

Key to the picture above:

Top Left is rose Penelope (from David Austin Roses). Top right is Catmint – Nepeta Racemosa Walkers Low (from Perry Hill Nurseries). Bottom left is Purple Sage  and Thyme and bottom right is Lavender Munstead (widely available)

Please note I'm not connected with any plant sellers mentioned.

Key words: Cottage Garden Gardening Plant combinations Rose Catmint Sage Thyme Lavender Beautiful pastel Herbs Scent easy to grow