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The ‘Souvenir du Docteur Jamain’ rose was rescued from a derelict nursery
Credit: Gap Gardens
Shopping for plants is one of my core horticultural skills. I have been putting this retail expertise into practice recently by ordering bare-root roses for a revamp of my tired, geranium-fixated London front garden.
Given the fact I have just published a book about Sissinghurst, perhaps it was only natural that I should be drawn to the “old” shrub roses that Vita Sackville-West championed. She ventured that the petals “recall the brocades of ecclesiastical vestments, the glow of mosaics, the texture of oriental carpets”.
She delighted in the soft, luxuriant pinks and off-whites of these varieties, as well as occasional flashes of vividness, like the rich red blooms of