This blog nearly didn’t make it. I was so angry with my computer that I fantasied about smashing it with a hammer, running over it with my car and then dropping it from a great height (probably from my sycamore tree onto the brick courtyard below).

I admit that I’m pretty stupid when it comes to technology. I probably take after my grandmother. She didn’t use a modern washing machine until the mid 90s, preferring a laundry tub filled with hot water and a wooden washing stick for smalls and a 60s electric machine for sheets. She only used a modern machine, a top loading one, because my mother gave it to her, and even then it was only used occasionally.

I started this blog three weeks ago. I spent over 50 hours transferring photographs of old roses onto my blog. There were so many photos on one page that my blog wouldn’t open. Naturally I blamed my computer: it was too old, too slow, too stupid. I had lots of tantrums. I shouted at my computer. I would’ve cried if I hadn’t been so angry. I announced to my household that it was all a terrible sign (and I don’t usually go in for signs and omens), my garden blogs would have to come to an end. My computer was stuffed and I couldn’t afford a new one. My husband and son were very patient, very helpful and very understanding. No doubt, and who could blame them, they were less understanding and sympathetic behind my back.

It wasn’t my computer’s fault as things turned out - but mine! What was I thinking trying to fit 100 photographs onto one blog page? Really, It’s like trying to fit 27 people into a classic mini. Sure they’re all going to fit but you won’t be able to drive the car anywhere.

Because of my, shall we say, ‘technical difficulties’, I will split this blog into two or three parts. This weeks blog is all about 7 remarkable roses in the Bolton Street Cemetery.

The first is a dreamy rose called Fantin-Latour.

I first noticed the old roses at the Bolton Street Cemetery last year when I was photographing the plants for an autumn blog. I loved the rose bushes, most of which had long stopped flowering. I loved their gnarled stems and branches and the way they looked like they had always been there. They gave the old graveyard a faded grandeur. I didn’t know much about old roses back then, but I did know that they were beautiful in a different way to modern roses and they had incredible back stories. The sort of stories you wouldn’t be surprised to find in a book of Fairytales.

The Bolton Street Cemetery is Wellington’s earliest graveyard from its colonial days. The city was founded in 1840. The oldest graves date back to the 1840s and 1850s.

Most of the old roses at the Bolton Street Cemetery were planted in the late 1970s. This is odd given that all of New Zealand’s early cemeteries would’ve had old roses growing in them. Why then didn’t the Bolton Street Cemetery have lots of original old roses? Some of them probably died, especially the very early ones, but old roses are known for being hardy, especially Gallicas, which sucker readily. My guess is the absence of original roses has something to do with the motorway. In the 1960s a four lane motorway was built through the middle of the cemetery. Half the graves had to be moved to make way for it. The old roses must’ve been collateral damage.

The pink rose in the photographs above is planted beside Henry Holland’s grave. He was the leader of the Labour Party from 1918-1933 (when he died). It’s a beautiful old rose called Fantin-Latour and it’s a centifolia.

I find rose classification utterly confusing. I’ve got some wonderful books about old roses and I’ve been dipping into them to research this blog. I know a bit more about old roses then I did six weeks ago, but I’m still, more or less, in the dark. There are wild roses, ancient roses, very old roses, old roses, old-now-that-it’s-2019-roses, old-looking-but-modern-roses and modern roses.

‘Old Roses’ is a relative and much disputed classification. Here are the main old types form oldest to, more or less, youngest (but still ‘old’). They are: Gallicas, Damasks, Albas and Centifolias; the old Moss Roses, China Roses, Portland Roses, Noisettes and Bourbons, then you have the Hybrid Perpetuals, Tea Roses, Hybrid Teas, Floribundas, rugosas and Hybrid Musks. No doubt advances in plant DNA will make rose classification easier and more accurate.

Centifolia roses are believed to have originated from Holland in the seventeenth century, but that’s not absolutely certain. Centifolia roses are also called ‘Cabbage Roses’, ‘Holland Rose’, ‘Province Rose’ and the ‘Rose of Provence’. ‘Fantin-Latour’ is named after a French flower painter who lived from 1836-1904. It’s a large spreading shrub that flowers in mid-summer (though the ones in the photographs above were flowering in early summer). The flowers are scented. This is what the late Peter Beales, rose breeder and grower, had to say about Fantin-Latour. ‘This rose will convince even the most ardent rejectors of non-remontant roses that it should be growing in their garden, for it has to be one of the most beautiful of shrub roses…It is simplicity itself to grow. Just find a spot where it can do its own thing and let it get on with it, no matter what the soil type. Dead-heading each year will suffice for pruning. If planted against a wall, it will attain a height of at least ten feet.’

I photographed all the different roses over many weeks in early summer using my camera or phone - whatever I had to hand. You will notice that the same rose may look different between photos. In one picture it will be covered in flowers, in another it will only have leaves or only one flower. That’s because of the time difference between pictures.

I emailed Judy Elliot, of the Friends of the Botanic Gardens, late last year. I asked her who I could contact about the old roses at the Bolton Street Cemetery. Judy was wonderful, she asked around, made lots of enquiries and gave me lots of names. Stuart Allen and Rachel Solomon were two of those names. These two people work for Wellington City Council. They’re in charge of the old roses and other heritage plants. They gave me tons of information about the roses.

The oldest rose at the Cemetery is a rambling rose called Banksiae alba plena, dating back, I think, to 1906. Here it is below.

The rarest rose at the cemetery is a Tea Rose called Papillon (see photo below). It was bred in France by the horticulturalist Gilbert Nabonnand in 1881. There is one Papillon rose at the cemetery and it was grown from a cutting of the original plant, which was sick and died. This is what Ladybird Roses in Australia have to say about Papillon roses - they have ‘medium sized semi-double blooms that start from pointed buds, opening to a melody of pink tones being richer pink petals in the middle, having a yellow base fading to creamy pink to white on the outer petals. There is a strong Tea Rose fragrance, that on a warm day will carry throughout the garden. The plant is strong and shrubby growing, however if limited to two canes can be trained as a pillar rose. The blooms repeat well.’

I asked Stuart and Rachel what their favourite roses were. They named three. Here is the first, Rosa ‘Cecile Brunner’, a climbing rose that they trained up a tree in the Jewish section of the cemetery.

Cecile Brunner Climber is tolerant of shady sites and is a very vigorous climber.

Rachel and Stuart’s second favourite rose is Rosa chinensis ‘Virdiflora’. It is called the ‘Green Rose’, but as you can see from the photos below it’s green and dusky pink. It’s an unusual rose with strangely formed flowers. Apparently they make an excellent cut flower.

The photos, above and two below, are of Richard John Seddon’s grave. He was New Zealand’s Prime Minister from 1893-1906, when he died in office. Planted in front of the grave is the Tea Rose ‘Archiduc Joseph’ (1872), This is Stuart and Rachel’s third favourite rose, because it’s reliable, prolific and can survive any condition. It’s also very pretty.

Rachel and Stuart work with Heritage Rose New Zealand to share and propagate the old roses. Many of the roses at the cemetery are rare. New Zealand has strict biosecurity laws and it’s very difficult for anyone to import new plants into the country. Many of the old roses in New Zealand were brought over by the early settlers or were imported before the Biosecurity Act 1993. Many of the old roses in New Zealand have disappeared thanks to urbanisation and old roses falling out of fashion. This makes the collection of old roses at the Bolton Street Cemetery very precious.

Old roses are hardier than modern ones, that’s because they originated in harsh climates in places like Asia and the Middle East. This means they don’t need a lot of fussing over. Stuart and Rachel give them a light prune after flowering, to control shape and size. They feed them twice a year, in spring and summer. They don’t spray them with fungicides and they don’t water them once they’ve become established.

I’ll finish with one last rose. A romantic melt-your-heart sort of rose.

‘Cornelia’ is a Hybrid Musk Rose bred by Reverend J. Pemberton in 1925. The good Reverend must’ve had a Cornelia in mind when he named this rose. If Cornelia were a character in a story she’d be sixteen and the only child of a Doctor and a piano teacher. Dark haired Cornelia would be that clever ‘girl-next-door’ who secretly reads Agatha Christie books on Saturday mornings, listens to jazz and dreams of falling in love with a man that looks like Gary Cooper.

Most Hybrid Musk Roses were bred by Reverend J. Pemberton (1852-1926) of Havering Essex in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Between 1912 and 1926 he bred 25 different roses with names like Clytemnestra, Aurora, Felicia, Vanity and Joan. After Pemberton’s death, his sister, who he lived with, introduced 10 more ‘Pemberton’ roses from his seedlings. In the 1930s Pemberton’s assistant, J.A. Bentall, developed about 10 more hybrid musks.

The popularity of hybrid musk roses, according to Elisabeth Ginsburg, (New York Times, 2001) is because of their fragrance, ‘Rose experts can discourse at length about hints of lemon and vanilla and overtones of myrrh, but the best hybrid musks smell like essence of roses.’

So what is special about hybrid musks? This is what Elisabeth Ginsburg has to say, ‘They tend to form good-sized shrubs, four to five feet tall and four feet wide. Some grow large enough to use as short climbers. Their growth habit has been described as “relaxed,” meaning that the canes go where they please, avoiding the stiff, upright stance characteristic of the hybrid teas. Most hybrid musks produce clusters of strongly scented pink, yellow or apricot flowers, with a stupendous first flush in May or early June ( December in the Southern Hemisphere), and less abundant spurts of bloom thereafter until frost.’

Helen Yemm (The Telegraph, 6 October 2001) reckons that every garden should have at least one hybrid musk rose. ‘These are without exception, vigorous and healthy, with open, shrubby growth and clustered flowers that look softly old-fashioned, yet manage to hold their heads up.’

The most popular hybrid musk is ‘Buff Beauty’, bred by Bentall in 1939. Its ‘new spring shoots and foliage are a wonderful coppery red, and the flowers that follow are palest dull apricot that fades to buff yellow. The scent is exquisite.’ (Helen Yemm).

Next Sunday I will bring you the second part of this blog. I plan to show you a handful of old roses that intrigued me at the Bolton Street Cemetery and uncover a few interesting stories.

Thank you Judy Elliot, Stuart Allen and Rachel Solomon. I couldn’t have written this blog without you.