Way way back in the day I was on a garden tour and saw an incredibly  beautiful  rose in a shady courtyard. It was trimmed into a topiary-ish shape and covered in sweet little pink blossoms….but the foliage  was what stopped me in my tracks. Incredible glaucous blue leaves on red stems and it was  growing and blooming in the shade! I  asked the docents  ( and owner ) if they knew it’s name , sadly they did not. Nowadays I would instantly google and within seconds have said rose on the way to my home, but  there was no google! How did we ever cope!!! I didn’t even own a computer ,  so it was pen and paper that saved the day.

I wrote to a popular garden magazine, yep, a letter, in an envelope, inquiring if they knew of the plant in the photo ( an actual photo taken by a camera with film and then developed at a little hut you drove through to drop off and pick up pictures)  and then waited.  A few months later a copy of the answer given by one of the editors of the magazine identifying the rose in question  as rosa rubrifolia . I then ordered from a catalog recommended by the same editor , again via mail, my very first mail-order plant ( if I only knew then  where this would take me!).

Those original two roses that came in the mail from Spring Valley Roses traveled  here to live with us  in 1998 and still grace the back of the border. Lucky for me, and you, this rose, (now known as rosa galuca), is a species rose and  so all the seeds in the wonderful hips it bears in the fall will come true  and you can not only increase your stock, you can give some to your friends.  

This morning  as I went out to get some photos of tulips, I passed by one of the children of the original two and was just struck again by how much I love the foliage of this rose. Newly emerging red stems with both reddish and blue leaves….this particular one grows in the full sun and is quite a happy camper there although it’s leaves will be more red than one grown in the shade.

If you put rosa glauca into the search bar of my blog you will see how often I speak of it and use it in flower arrangements. I would guess about 40 +varieties  of  roses live here in The Burrow, and the only other one  adore just about as much is the new Easy Elegance ‘Kiss Me’ and that is  more flower and scent  related  than foliage. This rose used to be difficult to source, but is now readily  available at many online nurseries , like White Flower Farm, Digging Dog and even David Austin  I imagine because it is a favorite of Margaret Roach and often spoken of on her popular blog A Way to Garden .   You can prune this rose annually to keep it in bounds , it will grow to 8 or more feet tall  if you don’t. I leave mine to do as they will, cutting them back only every 5 years or so  just to tidy them up. It is hardy to zone 2  and has incredible disease resistance . Although it only blooms once, in June, who cares? All that dreamy foliage is what you are after and then those bright orange  hips  to light up the fall garden.

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