Sally Holmes was in the most difficult area of shade, and its 10' canes arced over self-sowing foxgloves, originally gifted to me by an elderly, retired mill worker, Hazel. She told me that when the mill had closed two years before my late dh and I moved here, that it's silence was louder than the mill's 24-7 sound of 'clapping' when it was manufacturing some kind of textile.
But back to Sally Holmes - it was single, blooming in dense shade - and the petals were so large that they seemed to sail in breezes among the spires of foxgloves.
I can't recommend that one enough.
(Japanese anemones also self-sowed in that area and extended shady bloom into September, until my garden was discovered by a trespasser who neatly moved the anemones to a path (I guess at night), from where on another morning I discovered they had vanished. Evidently, the roots of Japanese Anemones are more easily moved while winter-dormant, during a thaw - as are invasives - the garden is starting to look ready for a parking lot now.)
But back to shade tolerant roses - further down the hill, Cornelia cascaded beautifully beneath a saucer magnolia, over a wall of old stones mostly gone now...
...and the one rose that performed best of all in shade with classic form, abalone-shaded ivory, fragrance, repeat performance, disease resistance - and did I say shade tolerance? - was the rose said to be the oldest floribunda: Gruss an Aachen
But we have no crime here - neither did garden, nor its disappearance, nor its gardener ever really exist - Graham Thomas never reached the arbor in that shade and neither did Ghislaine de Feligonde shower its clouds of apricot-tinted cream above them all - there's no manipulation of perception going on here - no stale real estate market impeding 'progress' - just a green peaceful big-brother-ish oasis.
karen
Oella
