Saving the queen of flowers

Trailing clouds of glory into your garden, historic roses are as vital a part of British heritage as a Gainsborough painting and must be preserved

- Miranda Gudenian

MY PARENTS didn’t find a key to unlock a door in a wall but they did find a ladder in a shed and climbed over a wall. Like Frances Hodgson Burnett’s heroine Mary Lennox, they discovered a secret garden. The garden, filled with roses planted in the 19th century, sold the house to my parents on that June day in 1956. I grew up there.

Sometimes I dream I am a child again, climbing out of my bedroom window on summer nights to wander in the moonlight. My friends the roses are waiting for me, decked in their finery for the grandest ball of the season. Let me introduce you to them. Here is ‘Belle de Crécy’ in a crinoline of parma violet conversing with pink-gowned ‘Empress Joséphine’. ‘Madame Isaac Pereire’, magnificent in magenta silk, flirts with ‘Ferdinand Pichard’, a dandy in his coat of raspberry stripes.

‘Reine des Violettes’ sweeps her purple gown imperiously in front of her companion ‘Ispahan’ but ‘Ispahan’ hasn’t noticed: judging from her blushes she is enjoying the attentions of ‘Docteur Jamain’, deep and mysterious as a glass of Saint-Émilion.

This is how I have always thought of these roses, written about them, loved them: as if they transcended the plant kingdom to become almost human. By the age of seven or eight I could recount their names and recognise their individual fragrances: musk, apricots, expensive face powder, the spices of the Orient, China tea or just that heady scent that we all expect when we lean our nose into a rose bloom.