The classic flower of British gardens has a reputation for being demanding – but centuries of breeding have turned the rose into the tough survivor our gardens need in today’s changing climate
When the Victorian archaeologist Sir William Flinders Petrie ventured deep into the Egyptian burial chambers of Hawara, he was astonished to find an 1,800year-old funeral wreath of roses – dried and perfectly preserved under the dust and sand. Originating in what is now Ethiopia, the roses were identified as the holy rose, Rosa sancta, and sent to the Herbarium at Kew Gardens for preservation, where they remain to this day.
While these are said to be the oldest form of roses in existence, fossils of the Oligocene era dating back over 30 million years suggest that roses were on Earth long before mankind appeared. But they’ve had symbolic meaning in human society for millennia, woven into religious, medicinal, cosmetic and cultural rituals – from the ancient healers of China and Mesopotamia to the funeral rites of classical Greek and Egyptian nobility, in the revelries of Roman times, royal coats of arms in Renaissance Europe, and gestures by lovers from Victorian society onwards. When you say it with roses, you really are following in a long tradition.
As a decorative plant, they’ve fallen in and out of fashion in the past century, but their current ascendance once more as the UK’s most popular garden plant is thanks in large part to their longevity and resilience, as well as beauty and variety.
‘Roses are so robust that they’re not at such risk from changing climate as other plants,’ believes David Austin jnr (below), head of the world-renowned rose breeding firm launched by his father in 1961. ‘My dad always used to say he was impressed when somebody managed to kill a rose – they’re tough old things. So much so, I’d argue a rose is the plant for our times.’ Rose breeding dates back to the ancient Chinese emperors around 500BC, when they grew extensively, according to Confucius. Their cultivation was commonplace across the Islamic world, as roses were traded and grown for paradise gardens from Persia to Spain, while medieval monks raised flowers in honour of the Virgin Mary among their Hortus conclusus, or enclosed gardens. A revolution in breeding emerged in the 18th century, with a new genetic strain of rose from China bringing repeat-flowering and a yellow hue not seen before. In the 20th century, the boom in domestic gardening drove new breeding to create bigger and brighter flowers on compact stems, though often without the fragrance of older types, carried by more recessive genes.
