WHEN he was interviewed a few months before his death at the age of 92 in 2018, nurseryman David Austin, dubbed the ‘Father of English Roses’, marvelled at his fortune in having ‘been able to make a life out of breeding roses’.
The son of a Shropshire farmer, he had already developed an interest in the subject by the time he was old enough to begin working at the family farm in Albrighton. His great love, however, was the charm and fragrance of old types of rose, so, at a time when the solid, all-purpose, Hybrid Teas were everywhere, he set about breeding new types that combined the rosette-shaped elegance and scents of old roses with the diversity of colour and repeat-flowering characteristics of the Hybrid Teas.
Across almost 60 years, Austin introduced more than 200 named English rose cultivars, but might be said to have reached the pinnacle of his ambition with the shrub rose cultivar Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’, introduced in 1986. Its parents were Rosa ‘Wife of Bath’ crossed with Rosa ‘Comte de Chambord’. Coming some 15 years after he’d launched his first range of what he termed English Roses, his creation lived up to her name.
Denne historien er fra June 16, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra June 16, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
