David Austin's Garden... a slideshow :)

David Clark has very kindly sent me a CD of over 150 beautiful photos of his recent trip to England and has generously asked that i share them with you. This first on is David Austin's garden. I'm in the process of compiling two more slideshows of his images from other gardens and will post them as I finish them. David has also provided all the names so I will also post these as well. With any luck David will pop in and give us a commentary on some of the images too

Enjoy part 1 of this three part series



David Austin Image Key:

Here's a link to HMF so you can search for any rose that appears in the slideshow: http://helpmefind.com/plant/plants.php?pt_sys=10

thanks to David and Simon

in this manner we will save the travel cost to 'GB'

Thanks for setting it up, Simon.
I've been to Europe quite a few times in the past 15 years, as director of Music Study Tours for the tertiary students where I teach. So I have come to love Vienna, Paris and London. I wish I could say the same about some of the youth hostels!
Whenever I could get a half day off (and give the students some teacher-free time:) I would get to the nearest rose garden - Roseraie de l"Hay, Versailles and Bagatelle near Paris, Kew Gardens, Sissinghurst, Mottisfont and David Austin's gardens in the UK.
This time it was an unexpected trip, as I was asked at short notice to take my elderly uncle to Birmingham to visit his daughter, who lives there.

The biggest difference I can see in all these gardens is the move away from HT's only to a more eclectic mix of old and new roses. DA's influence is seen everywhere. At Kew, the rose beds have just been restored to their original designs, with more Austins in evidence. The bushes had just been planted, so no photos. They also have a wonderful section of species roses, but they had finished. Likewise the Royal National Rose Society Gardens at St Albans had been completely "gutted" about 5 years ago and replanted 3 years ago, with a wide mix of roses - species, the fabulous display of old garden roses in these pics, all in large separate beds according to class - Gallicas, Damasks, Bourbons etc right through to the latest HT releases, and of course lots of Austins!
With Sissinghurst I have combined some pics from a previous visit because the gardens were looking a bit shabby and a lot of the roses had finished - we'd had a week of 30 deg, a heatwave!
DA at Albrighton is booming. I'd been there about 3 years ago, and the shop and cafe have doubled in size, and there were busloads coming and going on a Tuesday! I didn't have time to find Michael Marriot or DA as my cousin and uncle were with me, and they lost interest fairly quickly when they saw me in a photo frenzy:( You can see the new walled garden, which will feature perennials with the roses.
These are cool-climate gardens. In the midlands, where DA lives, the winters are long, cold and dark. It snows several times in winter and stuff stays frozen. The days are very long in summer. It starts getting light at 3:30 am and still light at 10pm. So the roses put on an almighty burst to reproduce themselves during these long days before the dark and cold sets in again.
It is always an amazing experience to visit these heavenly places. I hope you all get the chance one day.

Well what a great treat to visit here tonight/morning. I had been visiting Garden Web earlier. Superb photos, Dave, its so great to see them. I will be coming to look at them every night. I really enjoyed your talk above.
Simon, you did such a fantastic job displaying these photos and with their names and small thumbnails below. Thank you ! I am really looking forward to the next two !
I sure hope Generous Gardener and James Galaway find their way out here.

Glad you enjoyed them Karen. My favourites on the day were Munstead Wood - the colour is much richer garnet red than in the pic. It had sold out long ago in the garden centre there. Also the most floriferous were Windrush and Mortimer Sackler. Princess Alexandra of Kent was looking luscious. The Generous Gardener is featured as a small climber on metal archways in the gardens. I also loved the Old Rose Comte de Chambord. Thought it looked better than its offspring Gertrude Jeykll.

I can't get the slideshow to play

The Generous Gardener was one of my favorites when we were there and DA used it a lot in his gardens I also loved his little round garden of Charlotte.