Lusting after Gertrude!
And here is photo no.3
I went with Alex to see "A Riot of Roses" at the Garden Museum (next-door to Lambeth Palace) in May last year. Although it wasn't quite (my idea of) a riot, it all looked pretty and included a few roses named Gertrude Jekyll after the famous Victorian gardener(www.gertrudejekyll.co.uk) , which reminded me that I had lusted after having one in our garden for some time. Sadly, none of the GJ's were for sale but it set me on a mission! Nowhere it seemed had any for sale. A few weeks later we were invited to Malcolm & Tony's BBQ on a very sunny Sunday afternoon, and there were 2 of these roses in full bloom and smelling divine!
After a number of searches (online and otherwise) of rose suppliers we found that a company called Crocus had some "in stock". As luck would have it, Franco had a discount voucher to use on an order of over £50, so after some discussion we topped up the order to exceed the amount to take advantage. It was somewhat irritating then to receive all the other plants but no rose ! as apparently the ones they had were below quality.... so £40something worse off, and with a struggle to find space for the extra plants, we gave up ! Until the end of November, when it appeared David Austin Roses had stock (bare-rooted).... so we ordered a climber AND a bush rose... hooray! After being held up in the various postal strikes they finally arrived mid-December, the day before THE snow fell and the ground was frozen !! After surviving 5 weeks wrapped in wet newspaper indoors, they are both now planted out and looking healthy!
So, fingers crossed, we will have big pink blooms to look forward to in a few months.