Rose Advent Day 3

Rosa ‘Gentle Hermione’ is still flowering in my garden, as merry as you will. Just look at those blooms - that’s a PROPER rose, I hear you say, delicate, graceful, dignified, magical.....”if this be magic, let it be an art,” indeed.

The most fabulous fragrance, strong and myrrh-y, and impossibly beautiful pale pink flowers which get a little bit deeper in colour as time goes by. I take picture after picture, year after year, and it’s impossible to choose which to use. The name is gorgeous too - Hermione is the dignified and faithful wife of Leontes, King of Sicily, in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, who, after having received a bit of bad and untrue press, disappears/dies/reappears/is resurrected after sixteen long years. The main thing is that she’s gentle, lovely and demure: well done, David Austin Roses, for choosing such an apposite name.

This advent calendar helps me keep a record of rose behaviour - I can look back and see that last year, this rose was not the biggest fan of this year’s cold, soggy spring and the equally dismal run up to flowering season. Usually the go-to pink bloomer in my garden, in June 2021 she perfunctorily pushed out a fair amount of blooms, then clearly decided that she’d had enough of the cold, turned off the lights, and went back to bed for the duration until August when she came back for a long old encore. 

This year, 2025, on the other hand, she went bananas in June, flowered her socks off, then laid low throughout the summer heat. But come September, back she was, the statue in the garden come to life, more beautiful than ever and pumping out the flowers as if it were flaming June.