This is the first rose of summer, it’s a climber called Madame Alfred Carriere and it has the most delicious but delicate fragrance.
My garden has really light sandy soil and it isn’t very good for growing roses in but this one is doing very well and it manages to keep flowering from now until autumn. I took this photo of the back of the flowers because it shows up the tinges of pink best. It reminds me of vanilla ice cream with raspberry sauce. For some reason that dish is called a MacCallum in the west of Scotland.
The books describe it as a noisette climbing rose with slender, smooth stems. Very fragrant, rounded double flowers are creamy- white, tinged pink, 4cm across. Height – 18 feet and spreads 10 feet.
The only downside to this rose is that if you get heavy rain then the flowers tend to resemble soggy brown paper bags, not a good look. On the other hand there will always be plenty more flowers waiting to come. It’s definitely worth giving some garden space to it.
So beautiful! I love the little blush of pink on them.
Anbolyn,
The pink is lovely although there are some roses with better markings than this one, but they might be fussier about the kind of soil they grow in.
I think I can smell them here in Philadelphia! They’re lovely. Did you risk life and limb to take those photos? They look like aerial views.
Joan,
I ended up cheating and using my long-handled lopers to cut the stems, I thought I might as well have them in the house and they are now scenting the living-room. They were flowering too high up and I couldn’t get the ladders past the wrought iron table and chairs easily. I had visions of me falling from the top of them and exploding through the greenhouse! I just held the roses in my left hand and took the photo with my right, which is probably why they’re a wee bit blurred.
Now they are lovely. Down here in the south-west we’re still waiting for our roses, but the garden is full of poppies and the tamarisk is slowly turning pink.
FleurFisher,
I would have thought that your roses would have been out about a month before mine. I’m very close to the North Sea and it still feels like winter here. I think Mme Alfred Carriere must be a very early bloomer! I tried a tamarisk but it didn’t survive, which is sad because they’re so lovely and feathery.
Lovely roses, I do like the smell it always makes me feel summery and dreamy!
Yes, they’re much nicer than the modern roses which seem to have all of the scent bred out of them. I suppose it’s more important that roses last a long time and travel well if they are grown commercially.