Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden

The Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden at RHS Garden Wisley has broken with tradition by mixing roses with perennials in an original and winning wayAuthor: Vanessa Berridge, writer and editor who gardens in London and Gloucestershire. Photography: Allan Pollok-Morris

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Leaning spires of grass Stipa gigantea erupt from delicate sprays of Rosa

Flower Carpet White (‘Noaschnee’).

A new dawn forWisley’s roses

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Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden

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Mixed feelings greeted the decision to sweep away the much-loved rose garden at RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey. In rectangular beds, redolent of the 1960s and 1970s, roses put on a matchless high-

summer display enjoyed by many. But the Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden (sponsored by Witan Investment Trust), which opened in 2011, has confounded even the most ardent traditionalist. The garden is a cascade of colour and texture, with perennial planting enhancing the roses and providing interest through the seasons.

The new rose garden was part of a master plan to review the flow of visitors throughout Wisley, with the idea that separate parts of the garden should lead seam-lessly on from one another. Several garden designers were

Over the years, views on planting roses have changed many times. It used to be thought that roses could not

be planted on a site where they had been grown previously. This is no longer held as a universal truth – but what has endured as the most important factor is the need for good soil.✤ Soil preparation: the most important task is to improve the soil with the addition of well-rotted farmyard manure or garden compost.✤ Planting level: thoughts on planting depths have also changed. Many of us were taught to plant roses with the graft union level at, or slightly above, the surrounding soil level. Nowadays, best practice is to plant with the graft union buried about an inch below

the surrounding soil level as this is believed to reduce wind rock. ✤ Selecting rose types: roses can be purchased either as bare-root or container plants; for both types preparation should include digging a hole at least twice the width of the root system and incorporating a slow-release fertiliser such as bonemeal. In addition to this, when we plant roses here, we dip the roots of the plants into a solution of mycorrhizal fungi, which is claimed to benefit the root system.✤ Roses in pots: you can grow roses successfully in containers if you choose your plant wisely. As long as you select a rose of suitable size and vigour for your chosen pot; use good-quality compost; and feed and water well during the growing season, success will follow.

Latest thinking on rose plantingColin Crosbie, Curator at RHS Garden Wisley

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Long-lasting displayIn Robert Myer’s design, which sweeps up Weather Hill to the Bowes-Lyon Pavilion, varying heights of roses and perennials gives a sense of rhythm and drama. A drift of Geranium ‘Orion’ provides a long-lasting display of delicate blue-mauve blooms, the ideal foil for almost any rose.

✤ Rosa x alba ‘Alba Semiplena’ shows its off-white, semi-double flowers, emerging through soon-to-bloom veronicastrums, Amsonia tabernaemontana var. salicifolia and sedum.✤ The pink rose in the background is Rosa Scarborough Fair (‘Ausoran’), a repeat flowerer with Rosa x alba ancestry.

Late-season performersGrasses such as miscanthus add levity and movement to bold masses of roses and perennials such as starry, yellow Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii.

✤ Grass Miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light’ gives a fresh, late- season display as earlier-flowering plants die back. Some of the roses, however, carry on as late as the frosts allow. ✤ Dark foliage tones from a nearby copper beech, Fagus sylvatica (Atropurpurea Group) ‘Riversii’, are repeated lower down by plantings of Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’.✤ Other key roses: orange Rosa Lady Emma Hamilton (‘Ausbrother’) and golden yellow R. You Are My Sunshine (‘Frykwango’).

briefed by Jim Gardiner, then Curator of Wisley (now RHS Executive Vice President), to submit a design to reflect this.

The winner was landscape architect Robert Myers, an RHS Chelsea Flower Show gold medallist. He reviewed the whole space, incorporating into his design existing parkland trees and ornamental crab apples and cherries that had previously stood forlorn and unnoticed in lawns on either side. ‘There was an odd separation,’ he says. ‘The rose beds were somehow the dividing line between the formal and informal landscape.’

The beds now reach out to the ornamental trees and curve round the circular lawns in which stands a towering walnut (Juglans nigra). To create height within the planting are yew pillars, and other trees and shrubs, including Magnolia grandiflora ‘Kay Parris’ and several Sambucus nigra f. porphyrophylla ‘Eva’.

Robert has terraced in a series of shallow steps the 5m (16½ft) drop from the Bowes-Lyon Pavilion (built 1964) at the top. ‘We wouldn’t have dared terrace the ground as dramatically as Robert has done,’ says Colin Crosbie, now

Wisley’s Curator. ‘But it gives a great view up to the pavilion.’Sinuous hoggin and grass footpaths, and a gently rising,

wheelchair-friendly route snake round the terracing up to the top of the garden and knit the whole design together. Visitors meander through waves of planting and colour, with the perspective changing constantly: sidelong glances are offered across the main path, at benches tucked into banks of grasses, and at obelisks foaming with roses and clematis. From the top, you are fully aware that Surrey is Britain’s leafiest county as you »

A view of the Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden at RHS Garden Wisley as it

slopes down to the Laboratory.

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look over the garden at the lovely view of the Laboratory’s mellow red-brick chimneys.

Perennial movementsWisley horticulturists provided the planting plans, which, with their repetitive drifts of single plants, represent a development of Piet Oudolf’s ‘New Perennial’ style. Robert suggested colour schemes but left the final plant choice to the Wisley gardeners. Working with major British rose growers, they have selected some 5,000 roses, which are grouped together and tightly colour co-ordinated. The roses flow in rivers of yellow through whites, creams and pinks up to dark red near the pavilion. Many are repeat flowerers, so later in the season purple Verbena bonariensis winds through a grouping of roses in shades

Adrift in colourDrifts of roses are seldom seen in gardens. Here they work to great effect against swaths of flowering perennials, banishing the old ghosts of thorny stems arising from bare dusty soil.

✤ Key plants: pink tones come from Rosa Mortimer Sackler (Ausorts’), R. The Generous Gardener (‘Ausdrawn’) and Lythrum salicaria ‘Blush’; these contrast with fresh yellows from R. Flower Carpet Gold (‘Noalesa’), Cornus alba ‘Aurea’ and Hemerocallis ‘Marion Vaughn’. Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firetail’ adds a deep red accent.

Purples and goldsPurple-leaved plants work particularly well with orange, copper and apricot tones. Here a smoke bush provides a dark backdrop to the rose flowers.

✤ Key plants: Rosa Golden Beauty (‘Korberbeni’), R. You Are My Sunshine (‘Frykwango’), R. Lady Emma Hamilton (‘Ausbrother’), and shrub Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’.

Adam Bowley, Formal Ornamental Team Leader at RHS Garden Wisley, provides some pointers for successful rose and perennial combinations: ✤ Match the vigour of the rose and its companion: roses hate excessive competition and need space to establish. Avoid planting vigorous perennials, such as Lysimachia, Artemisia, Monarda and Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’, close to roses. Strong growers can be used but provide space, or place them where you gain a ‘borrowed view’ – through changes in topography or framing viewpoints from benches that combine plantings in different beds.✤ Choosing correct spacing: Nepeta and roses is a classic combination, but need to be spaced correctly. Popular N. ‘Six Hills Giant’ requires room. In this instance choose a vigorous rose to balance the Nepeta, such as R. ‘Prosperity’ or R. Queen of Sweden (‘Austiger’), but be sure to provide enough room and avoid planting too densely. For smaller spaces a good match would be R. Absolutely Fabulous (‘Wekvossutono’) with N. x fassennii ‘Kit Cat’.

Roses with perennials Some of the best-performing selections from Wisley’s Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden

Rosa Absolutely Fabulous (‘Wekvossutono’)Floribunda rose with excellent disease resistance, long flowering season and sweetly scented flowers.

Rosa Harlow Carr (‘Aushouse’)English rose with good scent and tough constitution, flowering freely on a well-shaped shrub.

Rosa Kew Gardens (‘Ausfence’)Tough, thornless rose forming an upright shrub, covered in summer with heads of single flowers.

Rosa Wisley 2008 (‘Ausbreeze’)English rose forming an arching shrub, with fruity-scented double flowers throughout the season.

Rosa Flower Carpet White (‘Noaschnee’)Easy, disease-resistant rose forming a low, spreading mound with masses of semi-double flowers in summer.

Rosa Lyda Rose (‘Letlyda’)Thornless and disease-resistant, shrubby rose with multitudes of scented, single flowers in summer.

Rosa William Shakespeare (‘Ausroyal’), in a prominent position, has defoliated both summers and will be replaced.

A long view has been taken. As Colin Crosbie says, ‘Roses have a limited life span in one spot so, in 25 years’ time, we will move the roses to where the perennials are and vice versa.’ So not just a garden for all seasons it seems, but for all time.

For information on rose growing, including cultivation tips, recommended cultivars and help dealing with pests and diseases, search ‘Rose’ at the RHS website: www.rhs.org.uk✤ RHS Gardens Hyde Hall and Rosemoor are each holding a workshop on pruning shrub roses on 16 January; see Diary, p79 and p81 for details.

More from the RHS

of gold and yellow, such as Rosa Golden Wedding (‘Arokris’), R. Poetry in Motion (‘Harelan’), vividly coloured R. Toprose (‘Cocgold’) and R. Absolutely Fabulous (‘Wekvossutono’), softening to creamy R. Lichfield Angel (‘Ausrelate’). R. xanthina ‘Canary Bird’ has been chosen for its stem and foliage interest as it flowers earlier than verbena.

Among them are the four shrub roses from David Austin Roses – named in 2004, the Society’s bicentenary year – after RHS Gardens Harlow Carr, Hyde Hall, Rosemoor and Wisley. Scrambling over obelisks are repeat-flowering Rosa ‘Madame Alfred Carrière’ and single-flowered R. ‘Félicité Perpétue’, the latter followed by clematis. Also displayed are the 2003 Rose of the Year, R. Rhapsody in

Blue (‘Frantasia’), and R. Flower Carpet Scarlet (‘Noa83100b’), which blooms on and on.

Interwoven with the roses are more than 4,000 herbaceous plants, many appearing several times to give continuity. These include salvias, rudbeckias, and a Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium maculatum (Atropurpureum Group) ‘Riesenschirm’) – recommended by Piet Oudolf and wonderful for butterflies. The plant associations are bold. On a corner site are blocks of purple penstemon, Agastache mexicana ‘Red Fortune’, Geranium Rozanne (‘Gerwat’) and Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Rosea’, with R. elegantula ‘Persetosa’ arching over Sedum ‘Matrona’.

The overall design balances formality with informality by lining the steps with rhythmic sprays of Stipa gigantea and Salix exigua; and by allowing lower perennials such as Ceratostigma plumbaginoides to spill onto the paving.

As you wander through the roses in high summer, the scent is intoxicating. But this is a garden for all seasons, with grasses such as Pennisetum ‘Fairy Tails’ in flower in autumn, and the upright seedheads of repeat-planted Veronicastrum virginicum f. roseum ‘Pink Glow’ supplying winter food for tits. Bulbs are planted through grass for spring interest.

Like so many gardens, the Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden is a ‘work in progress’. Roses have been chosen primarily for their colour, but some have not performed as expected.

Ligularia ‘Britt Marie Crawford’ provides a dramatic contrast to the peachy tones of Rosa Perdita (‘Ausperd’), illuminated by the firework-like spires and spikes of Kniphofia ‘Prince Igor’.

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Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden