At Bagatelle, Admire ‘The Best The World Has Seen'

THE market for roses is driven by novelty—and always has been since French nurserymen started large-scale rose-breeding 200 years ago.

- Charles Quest-Ritson

The unchallenged assumption is that new roses are better than old. New is beautiful: the really old roses that COUNTRY LIFE readers appreciate —Gallicas and Damasks—are only for contrarians and cranks. This year’s novelties, we are told, are infinitely better than last year’s. And no person of taste should grow anything like those vulgar, scentless Floribundas in shades of orange and yellow that were so fashionable 50 years ago.

Well, I suppose there’s some truth in that, but I have no doubt that the gorgeous roses we adore today, such as David Austin’s ‘English’ roses, will likewise be sneered at by garden snobs in another five decades’ time.

Fifteen years ago, my wife and I wrote an Encyclopedia of Roses that was well received, although it listed only 2,000 of the 15,000 different roses then known to be available in commerce. The French edition sold very well—it was published by Gallimard (very upmarket) and seriously reviewed in Parisian newspapers such as Le Monde, which considered it to be an important contribution to the history of Western culture.