Purple and lavender roses exude a sense of tranquillity and make the garden a serene and welcoming space that is also romantic and restful. This was my intention when I began planting several shades of purple, lavender, and soft lilac roses to the garden. The purple hues create the charm of an old-world, vintage garden full of unique coloured roses with exquisite fragrance.
Purple will always add richness, depth and command attention drawing us in with its majestic, alluring colour. As I walk through the garden, it is always exciting to catch a glimpse of a new bloom from the lavender roses; Love Song, Love Potion, or Blue Moon. The colour and heady perfume of more exotic roses; Fragrant Plum, Dusky Moon, Angel Face, Ebb Tide, Twilight Zone and Munstead Wood are in a class by themselves; stately and regal.
“I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Purple roses are in many shades and tones, some soft pastel that bring tranquility and calmness or deeper shades that are striking against greenery, making the landscape dramatic and eye-catching.
Purple roses include the shades and tones of plum, merlot, wine, violet, amethyst, orchid, lavender, and lilac. The lighter tints of purple in lavender and lilac roses such as Charles de Gaulle, Gra’s Blue and Tangles are perfect mass-planted or for borders. All evoke a calming presence in the garden.
Be different. Be original. Nobody will remember a specific flower in a garden filled with thousands of the same yellow flower, But they will remember the one that managed to change its colour to purple.”
Suzzy Kassem
Purple immediately says luxury because, throughout history, Purple has always been associated with wealth and royalty. Purple dyes were so expensive that the aristocracy and royalty were the only people who could afford anything made of Purple.
Purple had regal status, and still is today, less common in the plant world, and creates a unique outstanding landscape far more so than the ubiquitous pink, white and green.
All the mauve roses have been magnificent at different times, beginning early in the season with the first spectacular display of Simplicity Lavender. Like many roses, the Simplicity Lavender Roses have taken time to establish, but this year, the conditions were just right for a mass of subtle mauve blooms that show what we can look forward to as these shrubs become more established.
Simplicity Lavender roses are growing in two positions that enjoy the partial shade of trees. They are tall and upright with small rounded blooms, fragrant with medium glossy green foliage.
The blooms open from clusters of large pointed ovid buds and grow with a high-centred form throughout the season. This one was bred by Dr Keith Zary in the USA in 2003, and introduced in Australia in 2007 with the registration name JACshlav.
Simplicity Lavender is a rose with great disease resistance and an abundance of blooms that begin as . mauve then slowly fade to an old-fashioned soft lilac-pink, accentuated by the golden centres. There is an exceptional citrus scent as a bonus.
“I’d love to have a really flourishing vegetable garden, and I’d love to have a better area for a rose garden or a cutting garden, but I don’t. You have to develop a garden in the way that it’s meant to be developed.”
Julie Andrews
Quicksilver Roses were chosen for the front path archway and they have been ideal; gorgeous coloured blooms, fast-growing with lovely lush green leaves and no disease. Unfortunately, I missed the last flowering of the Quicksilver Roses because they came out over Christmas and New Year whilst I was away from the garden.
These are the first flush earlier in the season over the archway that were, like many roses this year, slightly damaged during the bud phase before they had time to open so the blooms are imperfect. Nonetheless a beautiful cluster style rose.
Quicksilver is a climbing rose bred by Tim Hermann Kordes in Germany in 2004, as part of the series- The Arborose® Collection. The buds on Quicksilver begin with a pink mauve hue and open to darker mauve centers with the outer petals being silvery lavender. The plants are healthy, with a mild scent and they have dark green almost leathery foliage that make the mauve blooms stand out.
It has taken three Quicksilver roses in two seasons to almost cover the frame, and during this time they have not been pruned at all, unless a damaged cane was present. According to the experts, climbing roses are best left unpruned for the first three years to allow them to become well established.
Growing below Quicksilver as a carpet is Stachys Byzantina, commonly known as lamb’s-ears. Lamb’s Ears are native to Armenia, Iran, and Turkey and belong to the Lamiaceae mint family providing a silvery contrast to purple roses and perennials such as French or Italian Lavendula.
An enchanting harmony of fuchsia, purple and pink…
Leatrice Eiseman
The Thank You Rose has everything going for it: a beautiful purple colouring, loads of cluster-flowered blooms, and a positive sentiment for the Transplant Australia rose, designed to raise money for the Leukemia Foundation.
The dark green foliage sets the purple roses off well and provides the perfect contrast. Purple is the opposite on the colour wheel to green, so purple is a faultless pairing with many shades of green in any garden.
The Thank You Rose is a Floribunda bred by Tim Hermann Kordes in Germany in 1997 and is known as Plum Perfect in the USA, Vodacom in South Africa and Thank You in Australia.
“The Rose is without an explanation; She blooms, because She blooms.”
Angelus Silesius
Adorable is another Floribunda rose in the purple range with at times a touch of fuschia or magenta colouring. It is a magnificent rose with fully double blooms on an upright shrub that has the famous health of the Kordes brand of roses, and will grow to around a metre tall.
The outstanding feature of Adorable is the strong fragrance which is prominent at midday or in the evening. The scent of the Adorable Rose which is part of the Kordes Parfuma® Collection is rich and complex according to Treloar’s Roses.
“If the rose is beautiful flower, it is also because it opens itself.”
Charles De Leusse
A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives roses.
Chinese Proverb
The Adorable Rose won the Most Fragrant Rose and the People’s Choice Award at the 2019 Australian National Rose Trial Gardens in Adelaide. Adorable was bred by Thomas Proll in Germany, in 2008.
It was introduced into Germany as ‘Carmen Würth’ in 2018, in Japan by Keisei Rose Nursery in 2019 as ‘Odeur d’Amour’ and in Australia by Treloars in 2020 as Adorable.
“Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.”
W Somerset maugham
Although beautiful there is little fragrance in the Love Song Rose, a Floribunda bred by Tom Carruth in the USA in 2009 In spite of that the Love Song Rose is the epitome of a romantic old-world rose in a subtle delicate lilac hue.
The Love Song roses appear to do well towards the end of summer and into Autumn with less intense sunlight. This maybe just the position in the garden but in the cooler temperatures Love Song Rose is prolifically covered in lavender blooms that are graceful and charming.
“Love thou the rose, yet leave it on its stem.”
Edward G Bulwer-Lytton
To create a purple rose, the rose breeders must find their occupation very enjoyable and challenging due to the mystical quality of purple and the rarity of purple pigment.
A classic purple rose bush is usually a hybrid tea rose, although there are several old-fashioned roses in a purplish, magenta tone: Roseraie De La Hay, Reine des Violettes, Rugspin, Scabrosa, Charles de Mills, Rosa Gallica Officinalis, Delicata, Jens Munk, La Reine Victoria, and Hansa.
Hybrid tea roses are the oldest class of modern roses. They are floriferous and created by cross-breeding the large hybrid perpetuals with elegant tea roses. The first hybrid tea roses were created in France during the 1800’s by French rose breeders and according to several rosarians ‘Rosa La France ‘, by French breeder, Jean-Baptiste André Guillot in 1867, has been acknowledged to be the first Hybrid Tea Rose.
The Hybrid tea roses have features in between the traits of the two parent roses and are often hardier and more robust than the tea roses and have repeat-flowering ability, uncommon in old garden roses.
What a lovely thing a rose is!
Arthur Conan Doyle
Hybrid teas are not only perfect for picking, but elegant, showing long pointed buds that open slowly to reveal large roses with high centred bloom form. Purple Hybrid Tea roses are Fragrant Plum, Neptune, Vol de Nuit,Blue Moon, Charles de Gaulle, Lady X, Blackberry Nip, Love Song, Fragrant Plum, Blue Emotion, Baronne De Rothschild, Big Purple,
The roses that grow in large clusters of blooms are the Floribunda roses. A Floribunda rose is a rounded shrub with thick foliage and abundant blooms, over a metre tall and wide. Often, the flowers are prolific, up to 15 or so in one cluster.
Floribunda purple roses include Blue For You,Thank You, Angel Face, Dusky Moon, Novalis, Love Potion, Love Song, Quicksilver, Sweet Intoxication, Munstead Wood, Burgundy Iceberg and one of my favourites Ebb Tide.
Grandiflora roses are the tallest roses. Grandiflora is Latin for ;’large-flowered.’ The first Grandiflora roses were bred in the mid-20th century and are a cross of Floribunda, and Hybrid Teas roses.
The resulting roses are tall and vigorous, with larger flowers born singly or in clusters of three to five blooms. They are tall and elegant, like the Fragrant Plum, Twilight Zone and Big Purple Roses.
“In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.”
Hubert H Humphrey
Roses are, of course, not the only plants that will bring purple to the garden. Cleverly planting a range of perennials, annuals, bulbs, and shrubs will ensure a continuance of mauve, purple and lilac in the garden.
Purple is one of the best contrasting colours against green, so it is ideal in landscaping and, if repeated in the garden design, will create a purple haze from a distance, especially towards the end of Summer, where purple salvias for example look fantastic against the bronzed heads of ornamental grasses.
“Smell the roses. Smell the coffee. Whatever it is that makes you happy”
Rita Moreno
By using a range of plants, there will always be some purple in flower during the season. The early Spring flowering of Clematis through to Lavenders, Alliums, and Agastaches in summer, then on to Asters, Agapanthus, Phlox, Salvias, Dahlias, and Petunias, all available in mauve and purple shades.
The world is a rose; smell it and pass it to your friends.
Old Persian Proverb
There are so many purple varieties to choose from
Annuals; Petunias, Verbenas, Pansies, Violas, Nemesis, Ageratum, Primulas, Phlox and many more.
Perennials; Lavender, Clematis, Iris, Campanula, Perennial Geraniums, Liriope Amethyst, Society Garlic, Scabiosa, Dianthus, Cranesbills, Nepeta, Lambs Ears, Delphiniums, Echinops, Aquilegia, Native Violets, Russian Sage and Salvias.
Trees and Shrubs; Crepe Myrtle, Buddleia, Brunfelsia, Callistemon, Westringia, Hardenbergia, Lilac, Wisteria, Hydrangeas, Azaleas, Rhododendrons, and the glorious Jacarandas,
Bulbs; Star flowers, Crocus, Hyacinths, Alliums, Tulips, Iris, Dahlias and Anemones.
Find more on Purple here from a previous post.
Content Di Baker January 2024
Images Di Baker in my travels or garden 2022-2024
