The English Roses by David Austin

David Austin has been hybridizing new roses for over sixty years and is still actively breeding them in the nursery even today. Austin’s goal was to produce the perfect rose – one with the fragrance and form of the Old Garden Rose but the color and repeat-flowering ability of the Hybrid Tea type of modern roses. The English Roses details his quest for the perfect rose as he sees it.

What are the ancestors of the English Rose?

David Austin discusses several Old Garden Roses, species roses and modern roses in the first portion of the book and talks briefly about what, if any, contribution they made to the English Rose. The Old Roses include Gallicas, Damask Roses, Albas, and Bourbons which have all made contributions to the development of the English Rose. Modern roses include Hybrid Teas and Floribundas which were the original modern rose contributors to the English Roses.

English Rose Flower Form

English Roses have the same variety of flower shape and form as the Old Garden Roses and are loosely grouped into a handful of descriptions.

• Single Flowers – Harking back to the wild roses which are all single in form there are a few English Roses with single flowers.
• Semi-Double Flowers – Light, open flowers with attractive stamens and more petals than the single roses. Few English Roses have this form of flower.
• Rosette-Shaped Flower – The most familiar Old Rose flower form and so one of the favorites among English Roses, rosette flowers have intertwining petals in several patterns.
• The Deep Cup – Generally these full cupped-shaped flowers are not fully open but rather have hidden stamens and large flowers.
• The Shallow Cup – More shallow, slightly smaller than the deep cup, these flowers can have incurved petals and a highly attractive shape.
• Recurved Flower – These roses have flowers that reflex back creating a beautiful dome-shaped flower as they mature.

English Rose Fragrance

David Austin set about to purposefully keep the fragrance that should be part of a rose flower intact during the selective breeding of the English Rose group so all English Roses have fragrance in varying types of scent.

• Old Rose Fragrance – Given to the English Rose from the Damask ancestry, this fragrance is the quintessential rose scent.
• Tea Rose Fragrance – Most often found in the yellow and apricot toned English Roses.
• Myrrh Scent – Highly unusual among any other rose, English Roses inherited this fragrance from the Ayrshire ‘Splendens’ and has persisted through the generations.
• Musk Fragrance – Given to English Roses through their Gallica ancestors this is a scent usually present alongside others.
• Fruit Fragrances – Less surprising than it may seem given that many fruits share a botanical family with roses, English Roses are known that have lemon, apple, pear, strawberry, apricot and even peach fragrances.

English Rose Groups

• The Old Rose Hybrids – The original English Roses are a result of breeding Old Roses with Hybrid Teas and Floribundas and are close to Old Roses in character.
• The Leander Group – These English Roses retain a growth habit closer to the modern roses and tend to be a bit showier than the other groups.
• The English Musk Roses – These English Roses are closer related to Noisettes and Hybrid Musk Roses so they tend to have paler foliage, more delicate flowers and great disease resistance.
• The English Alba Hybrids – English Roses developed from Alba roses giving them the wild-rose daintiness, gentle nodding flowers and a lighter scent than other English Roses.
• The Climbing English Roses – Large, shrubby roses with stems that are more flexible than typical hybrid teas make these excellent roses for trellis, pergola, fences or other climbing situations.

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