Think of roses and our minds turn inevitably to the summer months, when our gardens are filled with their gorgeous colour and scent. These wonderful flowers are a quintessential component of an English garden, with indescribable beauty – in bud, in bloom and afterwards, when many bear decorative hips.
Roses are also one of our most versatile plants. Centuries of breeding have given us varieties that will hug the ground, cover it with a carpet of flowers and stifle weeds. There are the traditional bush roses that could once be seen in every park’s rose garden, usually with an expanse of immaculately weed-free, bare soil at their feet. Nowadays, we’re more likely to grow roses in our gardens in mixed borders, letting perennials and grasses throng around their
