Souvenir de la Malmaison
Last Friday I went to visit a friend who has a beautiful, rambling cottage garden: a haven of colour and greenery in the inner city. His roses are starting to bloom as the days grow longer and there is more sunshine. This includes a wonderful classic old fashioned French rose - Souvenir de la Malmaison.
“Souvenir de la Malmaison”, a shrub rose, was introduced in 1843 by Lyon rose breeder, Jean Béluze. The rose was bred as a result of crossing Rosa Madame Deprez (a Bourbon rose) with a tea rose, possibly Devoniensis, and was originally called ‘”Queen of Beauty and Fragrance”, which says a great deal about her looks and character. Her later famous name comes from Château du Malmaison in Paris. Malmaison was the home of Empereur Napoléon Bonaparte and his wife Impératrice Josephine de Beauharnais. Josephine loved gardening and she fell in love with the English garden style much to the dislike of Napoleon. Her passion were the classic roses, and she asked painter Pierre Joseph Redouté to paint all possible varieties in the Malmaison gardens. It would make Redouté famous. Interestingly, when hostilities existed with England and other European countries, Josephine was still able to buy roses from England. Her collection at Malmaison was the largest and most complete in the Western hemisphere. After her death the gardens were neglected and the rose collection was destroyed. The much-romanticised history of Malmaison sparked an unbelievable amount of rose breeders to produce thousands of varieties of the old classic roses. This is the reason why so many classic roses are French and from the second half of the Nineteenth Century today. Legend has it that the rose’s name was changed some thirty years after Josephine’s death to honour the estate, when the Grand Duke Michael of Russia obtained a specimen for the Imperial Gardens in St Petersburg as a present to the Tsar. However, this has subsequently been disputed and it is thought to simply be a lovely fictional story to add to the romance and history of this beautiful rose.
Spring has finally come to Melbourne after a long and grey winter, and everywhere, gardens are bursting forth with beautiful coloured blooms in a profusion of colours.
Souvenir de la Malmaison
Last Friday I went to visit a friend who has a beautiful, rambling cottage garden: a haven of colour and greenery in the inner city. His roses are starting to bloom as the days grow longer and there is more sunshine. This includes a wonderful classic old fashioned French rose - Souvenir de la Malmaison.
“Souvenir de la Malmaison”, a shrub rose, was introduced in 1843 by Lyon rose breeder, Jean Béluze. The rose was bred as a result of crossing Rosa Madame Deprez (a Bourbon rose) with a tea rose, possibly Devoniensis, and was originally called ‘”Queen of Beauty and Fragrance”, which says a great deal about her looks and character. Her later famous name comes from Château du Malmaison in Paris. Malmaison was the home of Empereur Napoléon Bonaparte and his wife Impératrice Josephine de Beauharnais. Josephine loved gardening and she fell in love with the English garden style much to the dislike of Napoleon. Her passion were the classic roses, and she asked painter Pierre Joseph Redouté to paint all possible varieties in the Malmaison gardens. It would make Redouté famous. Interestingly, when hostilities existed with England and other European countries, Josephine was still able to buy roses from England. Her collection at Malmaison was the largest and most complete in the Western hemisphere. After her death the gardens were neglected and the rose collection was destroyed. The much-romanticised history of Malmaison sparked an unbelievable amount of rose breeders to produce thousands of varieties of the old classic roses. This is the reason why so many classic roses are French and from the second half of the Nineteenth Century today. Legend has it that the rose’s name was changed some thirty years after Josephine’s death to honour the estate, when the Grand Duke Michael of Russia obtained a specimen for the Imperial Gardens in St Petersburg as a present to the Tsar. However, this has subsequently been disputed and it is thought to simply be a lovely fictional story to add to the romance and history of this beautiful rose.
Spring has finally come to Melbourne after a long and grey winter, and everywhere, gardens are bursting forth with beautiful coloured blooms in a profusion of colours.