An introduction

Roses have been part of my life since 1993 so for 3 decades. It started when I visited the annual Rose days at Hex castle in Flanders, Belgium. At one of the rose stands I saw the most beautiful flower I had ever seen and it's fragrance totally captivated me. It was a rose named Yellow Charles Austin and I bought it as I had to have it. A few weeks later, when shopping at my garden center, I found the book "The English roses" by David Austin. Now I knew what my Yellow Charles Austin was and that there were much more of such varieties.

Rather quickly I wrote to Austin nurseries for a catalog and not much later the colorful booklet arrived and 25 varieties got ordered: Abraham Darby, Evelyn, Golden Celebration, Charles Austin, Perdita, Cottage rose, Graham Thomas to name some.

By reading David's book I learned about the old roses, the ancestors of his "English roses" and at the bookstore two more Austin books were bought: "Old roses" and "Climbing roses".

Especially the old, heritage roses and climbers seemed to get my attention. David described why he didn't like the modern Hybrid Teas and modern roses in général and I started to agree with him. Those stiff modern HT's with their shapeless flowers without fragrance were a weak resemblance of their magnificent ancestors. 

My parents agreed with me to create a French rose garden and within two years the garden was transformed into an old rose delight with many climbers growing freely on trellises, pergola's and arches. Circle shaped hedges of Box (Buxus) got filled with Damasks, Gallica's, Centifolia's and Bourbons combined with long blooming perennials. Each June, neighbors and friends came to admire the garden, being captivated by the hundreds and hundreds of baroque flowers in soft pastel colors and divine fragrance.

In the late nineties we didn't have the hot and dry summers we're experiencing the past 15 years so we had what we called typical "Belgian" summers, rather rainy with a few hot days. It began to bother me how the Austin roses couldn't hold their flowers upright after one rain shower. Many also had this floppy growth and the (too) big flowers fell flat on the muddy ground. No, I found out they weren't perfect and also rather blackspot martyrs not the mention the weak reblooming. I began to shift to the old roses almost exclusively. Only Constance Spry, my dear father's favorite, still stands in the garden today.

In 2004 love brought me to Amsterdam and I had to switch to a big roof terrace filled with roses in pots. It wasn't what I really desired but in life we make choices and at that time my relationship, later marriage, came first. My husband got sick in 2011 and he died in 2013. I decided to move back to Flanders, to be with my family once again. Immediately my rose heart rejoiced as I could garden in my own old garden again. In 2015 I met my current husband Yves. He lived in Leuven, only 24 km away from my home town. Yves had a rather big city garden which, at that time, was an empty canvas waiting to get transformed into a rose heaven. The Layout of our early 19th century town house with a conservatory and a few pittoresque garden sheds was the perfect background for the garden that was gonna emerge.

Both Yves and I are extreme nature friends and a good biodiversity of our environment is close to our hearts. I've always grown roses organically and now we took it a step further in our new garden in Leuven. Some ponds got created, hedge rows made from the annual wood of our Willow trees and ramblers got established everywhere. We planted native flowering perennials and their hybrids to attract as much pollinators as possible. Nest boxes for birds got spread all over the garden with great success and 1/4 of the garden surface was used to let nettles, wild blackberries and some elderflower trees grow.

The result was unbelievable. We've never had so much pollinators, birds, salamanders and hundreds of other little creatures essential to a healthy soil and garden. Our Motto is: Whats in the garden stays in the garden. We recycle and re-use almost everything and we make our own compost. No chemicals whatsoever. 

Three years ago, after very hot and dry summers, I knew that reblooming, modern roses aren't fit for warm and dry environments. My modern roses burned almost immediately when temperatures went above 26 degrees Celsius and during the hot summer weeks they completely went into stasis, they didn't do anything. They waited for cooler, fall weather. This wasn't what we wanted so decided to switch to old Tea roses, Noisettes and China's in combination with Bourbons like Malmaison, Coup d'Hebé, Mme Lauriol de Barny, Mme Isaac Pereire and Mme Ernst Calvat.

The Teas are the most elegant and most graceful roses of all and they are very heat and drought resistant combined with very good reblooming skills. Their cold resistance is a bit less than modern roses but since we're living in zone 8b this wasn't something of an acute problem. I've planted many old favorites like Maman Cochet and her white sport, Mrs B.R Cant, Archiduc Joseph, Général Schablikine, Anna Olivier, Comtesse de Noghera, Mme Jules Gravereaux, Jaune Desprez, Rêve d'or, Safrano, Elie Beauvillain, Philippa Pirette, Papa Gontier, Rosette Delizy and many others.

It was difficult to find information on Tea roses in Western Europe so I had to turn to Australia to get help. Tea pope Di Durston gave me a copy of her Legendary Tea rose book "Old roses for warm gardens". Besides Di, Viru and Girija Viraraghavan, Helga Brichet, Jan Eastman and Jérôme Chêne from famous old rose nursery Loubert gave me so much help and well needed info. 

I hope I can pass on this Tea rose knowledge to you, my readers... 

Enjoy! 

Dirk