Heirloom Roses - Tea Roses as Cut Flowers .. AT MY ROSE GARDEN

It is no surprise that roses are used world-wide as cut flowers.  Florists use roses every day in their floral arrangements, regardless of the season.  While we have roses year round, we are largely limited to stiff, glass house grown varieties.    Although still beautiful, many roses grown under climate-controlled glass have somehow lost the natural beauty of the old-fashioned, heirloom varieties. 

Of course, David Austin's English roses, with their full blooms and strong perfume, have done much to influence the preference for older roses, particularly for brides.  Yet we still expect that the roses we buy should have long stems, with tall pointed buds that open to full petalled blooms.  The sacrifice of limited perfume is often deemed a fair exchange for vase longevity. 

And glass house grown roses travel fairly well; much better than their older cousins.  So roses flown interstate and internationally are acceptable as an alternative, even preferable, to locally grown, ‘garden’ roses.  However, there is a small groundswell trend to locally grown, less miles travelled, cut flowers.  Many artisan florists, dedicated to their art, use garden roses when they can find them (see http://www.twigandgrace.com/).

In the United Kingdom the shift toward more sustainable, locally grown cut flowers is growing (‘xcuse the pun).   Innovative cut flower growers such as Georgie Newbery, proprietor of Common Farm Flowers and author of The Flower Grower’s Year, (see her inspirational blog at www.commonfarmflowers.com) are leading the movement toward locally grown cut flowers. 

The challenges of growing cut flowers locally in Australia are somewhat different to that of the United Kingdom; larger areas to traverse between growers across a number of states and generally drier, hotter climatic differences.  Yet if we adjust our taste for cut roses to include the elegant, softly coloured, fragrant blooms of Tea roses, pre-dating Hybrid Teas, we will re-discover roses that adapt well to the Australian climate. 

Tea rose, Mme de Watteville

As there is no native rose species in Australia, many of the Tea roses still available in Australia were planted by early settlers.  Blooming almost year round, Tea roses are tough and long-lived with bushes found surviving near long abandoned cottages and beside graves throughout Australia.  (See the superb book, Tea Roses:  Old Roses for Warm Gardens by Western Australian authors Chapman, Drage, Durston, Jones, Merrifield and West, Rosenberg Publishing PL 2008, for a comprehensive history of Tea roses in Australia.)  

Tea rose, Comtesse de Labarthe

Tea rose, Lady Hillingdon

Tea roses as cut flowers were recommended by the influential English garden designer, Gertrude Jekyll.  She states that Tea roses last ‘quite a day longer’ than Hybrid Perpetuals.  She also offers, rather idealistically, ... ‘so delightful to any one who lives a fairly simple life in the country to go out and cut a bunch of Roses, that the need for their often renewal is only an impulse towards the fulfillment of a household duty of that pleasant class that is all delight and no drudgery.’ (http://www.rosarian.com/jekyll/roses/chapter15.html)

While most of us do not have easy access to country gardens, we could enjoy the almost year round blooming of at least one or two Tea roses.  Tea roses come in many sizes, with smaller varieties suitable for growing in pots.   Or they can be grown in a small garden as easy care shrubs. 

A vase of lovely, fragrant Tea roses cut fresh from the garden is a rare luxury these days ... but a luxury worthy of revival.