Rosa Graham Thomas

At the end of November last year, I wrote about the first Garden Arch and how I had just planted a bare root rose on either side,

1. Rosa “Gertrude Jekyll”
2. Rosa “Graham Thomas”

Earlier this year, the Rosa Gertrude Jekyll flowered abundantly. I took great pleasure in cutting the roses to bring inside. I had hoped the rose would spend more time making leafy growth but the buds kept on coming and opening into the most beautiful and gorgeously scented blooms. 

The Gertrude Jekyll has long since finished and now it’s the turn of the Rosa Graham Thomas:

It has a uniquely rich honey-yellow colour. The flower isn’t as double as Gertrude Jekyll and the scent actually seems quite weak. I really have to bury my nose into the flower and sniff in order to smell a fresh tea-rose, almost fruity fragrance, but it is there – just. I was hoping I’d be able to smell it in the air as it is advertised to be a medium-strong scented plant.

Despite that, I can’t not-like this rose, it’s so alluringly sumptuous it puts the oriental lilies growing around  it to shame.