THERE IS HOPE AFTER ALL

INTRODUCTION | THE RIGHT ROSES

At The Right Roses, we support two important causes:

1. ‘The Best Rose Experience’.
2. ‘Together We Protect This Planet’.

The team at The Right Roses firmly believes that, with the support from all members, collectively we can make a big difference. Moreover, sharing your own experience and stories will be such an important way to enrich the resources for rose-lovers all over the world, including YOU.

This time, we would like to share with you a story about rose ‘Audrey Wilcox’ from Ms Pamela Draper, an English gardener.

This year is a challenging year to many of us, including Pamela. Under this circumstance, our garden has become so much more important than ever. At some point, the garden and roses were perhaps the only source of joy we could find (within those four walls). We could totally see how devastating it could be to Pamela as her roses were not feeling well. However, as it is always said, doing gardening is to believe in tomorrow. There is still hope after all.

Rose ‘Audrey Wilcox’ is a great rose. It is one of the oldies, but goodies. Large blooms. Healthy. And, heavenly fragrant! Unfortunately, it is one of those relatively underrated roses. The team at The Right Roses hopes that the story from Pamela below could somehow improve the popularity of this fantastic rose. We highly appreciate Pamela’s contribution.

We look forward to many other stories around the world. Please send your rose experience to RightRosesCom@gmail.com.

‘MY BIGGEST SURPRISE’ SERIES | MS. PAMELA DRAPER

• Country: UK
• Name of the rose: Rose ‘Audrey Wilcox’
• Rose type: Standard

I have, many roses, but there are two rose trees called Audrey Wilcox. It is a tall bush and has really good sized blooms of mixed pink shades and crinkly edges to the petals. It holds its head up beautifully and usually starts to flower in May in abundance and then continuously but more sparsely throughout the summer. It is probably the last rose to flower.

This year, It was flood level rain in England this winter and up to April, when it went to being extremely dry. None of my roses liked it. The soil is clay and it was just too cold and wet, followed by cold and dry. I pruned all my roses in February but they didn’t look good. There was too much dead wood this year, and many roses had died too. Many rose branches looked like those of ancient trees. Grey and gnarled.

I just hoped, but there were not many new shoots.

Then, in early May, both Audrey Wilcox bushes sent out new branch shoots from the awful looking wood and within a couple of weeks they were both in heavy bloom. The perfume is not heavy and sickly, but it is strong and beautiful.

That event alone surprised me. However, the bush on the left continued to thrive after the first flush, but to my horror, the equally abundant one a few feet to its right, just withered and died after its blooms had gone.

I was so disappointed and sad, because, this year has not provided much to cheer us up in general, and to see even plant life not thriving was not encouraging. I cut off all the dead branches, but couldn’t quite bring myself to uproot the rose tree roots.

Then two weeks ago, I saw a new shoot from the base above the graft line, and there it was, still alive. It is growing stronger every day and I am really happy, but totally surprised. There is hope after all.

Photo credit: Pamela Draper