Given my
family history, editor Dave is taking a huge risk in allowing me to contribute
a column to this newsletter. Throughout my father’s long life, he told us many
times that he first played what is now called premiership grade rugby in the
season after his club won a premiership title. The rugby club in question won
its next title 76 years later, ending the drought which my self-deprecating dad
claimed to have started. Let us all hope
my debut as a contributor doesn’t mark the beginning of a similar hiatus for
ORS in the “Best Small Newsletter” stakes!
The purpose
of this column is to entertain. If it informs, that will be a bonus. If it does
neither, the writer will be unemployed and hungry. It is assumed that while
readers are rose enthusiasts, they have an interest in gardening generally.
Let’s get started then.
The naming
of roses is a fascinating topic. Many names, most even, have an interesting
story behind them. It really is regrettable that there is not a system in place
which records those stories, perhaps in the registration process. For example,
naming a rose in memory of a loved and respected person may be effective in
perpetuating the person’s name, but unless the individual is particularly well
known for some other reason, e.g. ‘Sir Edmund Hillary’, ‘Hayley Westenra’ or
‘Kate Sheppard’, nobody knows anything about the person behind the name and the
opportunity to celebrate their life and achievements is lost.
Many roses
are named with sales in mind (‘Everlasting Love’, ‘Many Happy Returns’, ‘Loving
Memory’, etc) and while the practice is understandable, it does nothing for the
intrigue of rose names. Much more exciting are the likes of ‘Squatter’s Dream’,
‘Earth Song’ and ‘Rambling Rector’, but even then the story is usually left to
the imagination.
Not so with
David Austin’s English Rose Collection. The names of his roses are as
fascinating as England itself and in almost every case, if the name is not
easily recognizable in British culture, history or literature, it will be
explained in Austin’s books or on his company website. For example, ‘Lady of
Megginch’ was named for the late Baroness Strange, whose family home is
Megginch Castle in Perth, Scotland; ‘Lady Emma Hamilton’ was the mistress of
Lord Nelson and ‘Brother Cadfael’ is the main character in a series of mediaeval
whodunnits written by English author Edith Pargeter under the nom-de-plume ‘Ellis
Peters’.
Even potential
names Austin has not used inspire
curiosity. While he has named many roses for Shakespearean characters and those
of other notable English writers, I can find no rose with a name from any of
Charles Dickens’ works. As other breeders have used some such names in the
past, one must assume it is not because of copyright issues, so does Austin
have an aversion to Dickens? If that is so, he has no such aversion to Thomas
Hardy, the titles of at least three of whose Wessex novels are honoured with
the names of roses: “The Mayor of Casterbridge’, ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ and……
'Jude the Obscure'
