ABOUT OLD ROSES...

We say a rose is considered old if it was in cultivation by the middle of the nineteenth century but the exact date is debatable; the American Rose Society sets it at 1867, the year the first Hybrid Tea was introduced, while others consider any introduction after 1840 'modern'. By the time the China Rose was used extensively by plant-breeders, the old rose started to become 'old fashioned' in the truest sense, because the Chinese hereditary traits produced new colors and forms and extended the period of bloom from June to frost, whereas old roses bloom for only one month. The new crosses were named Hybrid Perpetulas and in time were to become one of the immediate ancestors of our contemporary Hybrid Tea Roses.

Among the original roses planted by Jane Bowne Haines from 1814-1829 are a few that belong to an elite group, which "are at once the most ancient, the most famous and the best garden plants among the old roses". One of these ancient ones is the Apothecary Rose, a Gallica believed to be among those described by Pliny, the Roman naturalist, in the first century A.D. Few roses can lay claim to the hardiness and strength with which they have survived the centuries to bloom again in gardens today.

Her collection includes another Gallica, one of unusual color-intensity and texture. The semi-double flower of the Tuscany Rose, best seen in the early morning, is a masterpiece aptly described as 'velvetly-blackish crimson, with conspicuous yellow stamens'.

If there is a scent most typical of old roses, it is found in the Cabbage Rose. 'Its delicious old-timey fragrance, like nothing else in rose-perfume, distinguishes it from all others always'. Each of the roses at Wyck has it's own story to tell, be it in their ancestry, their flower form, their buds, or their leaves. Notice the very double, quartered arrangement in the Damask; the unusual fuzzy buds of the Moss Rose, the foliage of Sweet Brier which after a soft rain, smells like winter apples.

To walk among these noble old treasures is to enjoy the existence of a living thing that binds us to by-gone days. The Garden at Wyck, as a living rose-museum, hopes to preserve the disdisappearing old roses and make known their beauty to present and future generations.