Rosa ‘Clotilde Soupert’ climbing form

This is a climbing form of a once famous Polyantha rose. The Polyantha roses are one rose group about which I know very little: they have never had much interest for me. That lack of interest has an easy explanation: in the neighborhood where I grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland there were several gardens with plants of the Polyantha rose ‘Margot Koster’. The flowers of this rose have a daring color, a sort of shrimp pink. Attractive as they are when fresh, they fade unpleasantly. An old bloom is to my eyes ugly, blotched with unharmonious colors and frankly dirty looking. On top of that, the plants were small and runty looking. This caused me to write off the Polyantha roses.

Now fast forward about fifty years. I was in another garden and overheard some rose enthusiasts talking about the rose ‘Marie Pavie’: in fact, several of the plants were right there for me to see for myself why this rose pleased them so much. I was surprised to hear that it belonged to the Polyantha class. Maybe it was time for me to take another look at the Polyanthas. In fact, a plant of ‘Marie Pavie’ was soon added to the rose plantings.

In my rose reading I had frequently encountered the name ‘Clotilde Soupert’, and the name was almost always accompanied by words of praise. That made enough of a favorable impression to keep the name in my memory. The time came when I needed an extra rose to fill out a rose order, and I hit on the climbing form of ‘Clotilde Soupert’. When the plant bloomed for the first time this year, I had one of those “where have you been all my life” experiences: it’s that good.

This rose does not do brash, spectacular, flashy, exciting, blast of color, torrents of bloom or related extremes. It’s just the opposite: a very quiet rose, sweetly fragrant, one which when it opens has a very pleasing radial symmetry and globular form. I’m so glad to have netted this one in time. 

Phygelius ‘Cherry Ripe’.

Phygelius are not well known in our local gardens, but they are nothing new. In retrospect I realize that there was a lot of horticulture going on in the neighborhood where I grew up in Silver Spring. One of the families we were friendly with on the block where I grew up had an intriguing small garden.  I saw a number of plants there for the first time. Among them was a Cape fuchsia, a Phygelius. Who would have thought that they were being sold here in the greater Washington, D.C. area a half century ago? You’ll have to look long and hard to find established plants now, and it’s doubtful if any of those introduced so long ago persist.

I’m giving ‘Cherry Ripe’ a trial this year up at the community garden plots. So far its performance has been puzzling. The plant seemed to be growing all along, and at the tips of the stems I could make out what seemed to be developing flower buds. But these did not mature into actual blooms until about two weeks ago. The plant is blooming freely now: but will it wait until August every year to start blooming? A bit of Googling turned up comments which suggest that it should be indifferent to day length and has the potential to bloom all year if temperatures allow.

Plants in bloom look a bit like the tall Sinningia blooming now such as S. ‘Scarlet O’Hara’ , ‘Towering Inferno’ and S. sellovii: the flowers dangle in the same way.

Googling turns up winter hardiness ratings of USDA zone 6 for ‘Cherry Ripe’: I’m doubtful, although zone 6 might be possible in a very winter dry climate. The plant here will probably spend its first winter in a cold frame. 

Tuberous begonias

Although in a recent blog I said that the tuberous begonias do not thrive in our area, in doing so I was mostly repeating uninformed gossip. The prevailing attitude is that they do not do well here. But even in the older literature from eastern North America, there were those who stood up and said that although there are problems, these plants are well worth growing,
Over fifty years ago, in the Silver Spring neighborhood where I grew up, one of my neighbors grew tuberous begonias in a big way. He ordered the bulbs from California and planted them in a long (maybe 30’) bed at the back of his garden. I sometimes saw him in the woods gathering top soil for his begonia bed. As a youngster I took these begonias for granted: I had no idea that what he was doing successfully was the exception rather than the rule.
My own first trials with tuberous begonias came long after those times. For me, they were not good garden plants, and I soon lost interest in them. But occasionally I would see photographs (especially in older books) of tuberous begonias growing luxuriously in favored climates, and this would bring on another wave of temptation.
It happened again this year: I saw picotee flowered tuberous begonias illustrated in one of the catalogs. Actually, I had been noticing them for several years. And by then I had also dreamed up some schemes which might make their successful cultivation possible here. So I ordered a half dozen earlier this year, and the first of them have been blooming for weeks.
So far they look great. And they are beginning to bloom freely.
Am I counting my chickens before they hatch? Is there some serious tuberous begonia problem in my future? We’ll see: but for now, enjoy the image above. With luck, there will be many more in the weeks ahead.