What Is an English Rose Garden?
Surprisingly, the origin of the English garden is not English. The first known English gardens were planted by Roman conquerors of Britain in the first century A.D. It wasn't until the Middle Ages that the Brits began planting their own formal gardens on monastery and castle grounds. No garden is more English than the English rose garden.
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Beyond Beds
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Roses in beds are a common feature in an English rose garden. Gertrude Jekyll, the famous British garden designer who wrote the classic "Roses for English Gardens" in 1902, thought the typical English rose garden was "already too extensive in its display of mere beds." Ms. Jekyll recommended planting roses that could climb onto nearby bushes or small trees or cascade over walls. English rose gardens often feature rose bushes planted in hedges, pruned into particular shapes or climbing up a trellis, arbor or shed.
A Mix of Formal and Free Plantings
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Although the English rose garden can be entirely formal in style or more free-flowing, many display a mix of formal and more natural design. Meticulously manicured English rose gardens often buttress up against the wilderness of the forests that surround them. Formal elements, such as stone steps, balustraded terraces and retaining walls, are many times complemented by free-flowing cascades of roses softening their architectural lines.
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A Green Background
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Another key feature of the classic English rose garden is a dark-green background formed of shrubs and trees. This provides the perfect canvas on which to highlight the beauty of a single rose or a more abundant display of blossoms.
Pathways and Walls
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Pathways and walls are essential elements of any English garden. A softer, more natural-feeling garden may feature winding paths. Straight walkways bordered by formal beds and plantings add to the structure of a more formal garden. Walls define spaces and create privacy. The English rose garden may feature living walls of hedges and rose-covered trellises or walls of wood, stone or brick.
Arches
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A rose arch at the entrance to the English rose garden invites visitors in. Placed elsewhere, rose arches add height to a garden and beckon people to explore a particular area of the grounds.
Places to Sit
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Benches provide a welcome place to rest, reflect and enjoy the beauty of an English rose garden. Ideally, seating is placed near a garden focal point, such as a bird bath, a sculpture, a pond or a fountain.
Outdoor Rooms
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All of these features --- walls, borders, places to sit, archways --- create one of the defining features of the English garden: the outdoor room. Traditionally, these "rooms" were used to play lawn games. Today, they can simply be clearly prescribed spaces that denote a particular use, such as a resting space, or highlight a prized rose specimen.
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- Photo Credit A beautiful pink rose in the garden image by Gabees from Fotolia.com
