National Rose Month

National Rose Month

Did you know June is National Rose Month? The whole month is dedicated to celebrating the beauty of roses, their history and the culture behind the flower's eternal meaning of love? The rose as well as being the symbol for love has, in some cultures, symbolised war and politics.

In 1986 President Ronald Reagan declared the rose as the National Floral Emblem of the United States, saying “Americans who would speak the language of the heart do so with a rose.”

The French were the first to bring cultivated roses to America and one very famous French lady was responsible for introducing many new varieties to Paris and has also been credited with creating the first garden with only one type of plant. Guess what plant was featured in her one-type style garden ... you guessed it - the rose!

In this post I also share some of my rose photos taken around my village and nearby towns.

Josephine Bonaparte and her Rose Garden 

This very famous French lady was none other than Empress Josephine Bonaparte  (1763-1814), Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte's wife. Born Marie Josephe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie, she met Napoleon Bonaparte in 1796 and was married to him on 9 March 1796. More on Napoléon Bonaparte (the Emperor) and Napoléon III (the architectural mastermind) in our post Napoléon Bonaparte.

The story of her rose garden starts in 1799, when while Napoleon was away fighting the Egyptian Campaign, Josephine bought Malmaison.  Malmaison was a small château in the country just outside of Paris. When I say 'small', history tells us it was a 650 acres estate with hundreds of acres landscaped by Berthault in the English Landscape fashion with rolling hills and dotted with pockets of woods.

Josephine oversaw the creations of pavilions, grottoes, vineyards and wheat fields throughout the Malmaison estate.

Because of her great love of plants and the desire to collect especially rare plants, she started collecting roses. Part of the estate was dedicated to this rose collection and is where she created the first garden using just one type of plant, her favourite, roses. 

Empress Josephine's collection particularly grew in the decade between 1804 and 1814, becoming the greatest and largest rose collection in the world with about 250 species and varieties.  By 1830 about 2,500 different rose varieties would be available to Parisian rose lovers, including 200 new varieties created by the Empress' head horticulturist Andre du Pont.  

Did you know about the great contribution to the species of roses Josephine Bonaparte had? I didn't and I think that I'll remember this next time I buy a bunch of roses as a gift for a loved one.

Interesting French Rose Facts

• The Charles de Gaulle Rose is a hybrid tea rose with large multi-petalled unique warm lilac mauve petals. It is one of the finest of all the older mauve roses. Hybrid tea roses give a colourful display from late spring to late autumn. They are upright bushes which produce classically shaped blooms on long stems, this makes them a perfect choice for cut flowers. 

• The House of Meilland in France is a company that has a research team dedicated to the creation of rose varieties for cut flowers and varieties for garden and landscape. They product roses with grafting and cutting, they are a mail-order company selling bushes, plants, bulbs and seeds, and specialise in the protection of plant varieties and the monitoring of brands. Their website has great pruning tips and ships roses in the northern hemisphere. Find out more about them here > https://meilland.com/en/

• There is a Parfum de Paris Rose (part of the Delbard Grand Perfume rose collection) which is well loved for its intense fragrance. Described by Rose Sales Online (an Australian online rose plant shop and blog) as "a truly beautiful branching shrub which flowers continually and produces the most heavenly fragrant blooms filled with glowing mid-pink petals in a swirling mass.  The shrub is complimented by dark glossy foliage which is highly disease resistant - a very easy-care rose and highly recommended where fragrance is a must!" - Rose Sales Online. They ship roses within Australia and have a handy A-Z encyclopedia of roses >  https://rosesalesonline.com.au/online-a-z-encyclopaedia-of-roses/

• For UK readers, I found a beautiful website to learn more about roses called Country Garden Roses. Their A-Z encyclopedia of roses is very extensive with photos and they also have an online shop. Read their A-Z of roses

 > https://www.countrygardenroses.co.uk/shop/125-A-Z/

Did you enjoy reading about National Rose Month and Josephine Bonaparte? 

Pin to read again later

Related Posts