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.