Noisette – Champneys Pink
Miss MacLean, a true rosarian had a garden in Armidale NSW, known as the ‘Garden of a 1,000 Roses’. Over the course of a few years, this is where I did my true and invaluable apprenticeship in pruning and caring for roses.
I never actually knew her first name. She was always addressed by everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, simply as Miss MacLean. Her expansive and comprehensive collection of roses was all contained in an average suburban town sized block. There was little to no lawn or outside entertaining area, every single spare inch from fence to fence was devoted to her beloved roses. When I first met her she was a formidable woman, a spinster in her eighties, wildly intelligent, as sharp as a tack, encyclopedic in her knowledge of all roses, yet whippet thin and frail in body and health. She was a true lady. I never saw her in pants or trousers, always wearing dresses or skirts accompanied with her mandatory rolled up stockings.
Her garden was literally her life. She lived and breathed it. She tended it every day throughout the year regardless of the weather. She at times would crawl on her hands and knees, through the ever-narrowing paths, to weed and tend to her beloved roses, her stockings stained, scraped and shredded every single day. The garden’s wooden pergolas, fences and screens were ancient, near derelict, lopsided, long weathered and bare of paint. But it never really mattered, the magnificent roses hid it all. Miss MacLean was formerly for many years the Head Mistress of the private boarding school, PLC in Armidale.
Bourbon – Madame Ernest Calvert
Her rose collection included a dizzying and dazzling array of varieties. They were all planted in designated grouped areas. There were the Albas, the Centifolias, the Chinas, the Portlands, the Damasks, the Chinas, the Teas, the Bourbons, the Gallicas, the Rugosas, the Noisettes, the Hybrid Musks, the Hybrid Perpetuals, the Hybrid Chinas, the old world climbers and ramblers, and finally the modern Floribundas and Hybrid Teas. If you have no experience with these old roses, look them up and do some research, for all modern roses have been bred from these original varieties. Even better plant some of them in your own garden.
Charles de Mille
Remarkably, with her passion to forever add to her rose collection and with finite space available, new specimens were planted densely and tightly, shoulder to shoulder with older varieties, planted every 30cm or so apart in both width and depth. At times it all seemed a bit insane. Or was it the work of a pure genius? Even today I am still unsure. But what I do know is the garden dripped with love, the blooming roses truly exquisite in their massed perfection, all married with their deliciously intoxicating perfumes. It was a truly divine and magical experience, probably never to be repeated.
I spent a wonderful and rewarding few years tending this rose garden. Even though she had the great manners of a true lady, she followed me like a hawk, watching everything I did. Thus I had the opportunity to endlessly ask her questions. What rose is this? What group of roses does it belong to? When does it flower best and so how should it be pruned and when? I was hungry for her answers, forever learning, learning and learning, lapping up all her pearls of wisdom, knowledge and experience. It was the best of times.
Sadly Miss MacLean has now passed away, but her passions, dreams and legacy still lives on. A year or two before her death she bequeathed her entire rose collection to the local branch of the Australian Garden History Society and duly to the establishment of a brand new rose garden at the National Trust’s Saumarez estate on the outskirts of Armidale NSW. This huge and expansive rose garden’s purpose is to showcase the history of the rose from around Australia and the world. So do yourself a great favour and visit when you can, for it is a truly memorable experience.
Happy gardening and have fun,
Regards Ned McDowell.