The Name of the Rose

A discussion in flickr prompted me to consider how many of the plants in our garden are named for people. This seems to apply particularly to roses. So here is a walk around the garden to see whom we may meet.        

We come to  Mary Webb first. She is on the entry path. In fact there are four of her, all standards. Mary Webb (Auswebb) was bred by David Austin so is one of his English Roses. Bred of a seedling x Chinatown it was released in 1985. David Austin’s website says that it has a strong scent of myrrh. It seems to me that in that case myrrh must smell like stale beer. Still she is a beauty.  David Austin  lists it as yellow but for us it is more very pale lemon, shading to yellow in the depths of the petals, and ageing to white. Mary Webb was a poet and novelist whose works were published during and after the First World War. Her most famous novel was ‘Precious Bane’ (1924) but she was largely unappreciated until after her early death.