This is Lamarque

Have a look at the beautiful Old Garden rose, Lamarque.

This is a Noisette rose bred by Marechal in France in 1830. If you would like to delve further into the story of Noisette roses have a look at this article. Go on –it’s interesting.

Lamarque has white blooms with a pale lemon yellow centre and mine is moderately fragrant.

The flowers are produced from spring through to late autumn in heavy clusters, producing a spectacular display.

It’s a large climber that can apparently grow to 6 metres. Mine is a weeping standard which I bought from Roworths Rose Nursery (this is not a sponsored post by the way). Luckily for me it doesn’t mind a prune. I give it a light prune in early autumn and when the canes start attacking me as I walk past, along with a harder prune in winter.

You can see in the photo how it looks at the end of autumn and, below, how it looks at this time of year, post prune.

Last year I pruned it much harder, almost back to the support ring, and I wasn’t that thrilled with the result. It was still large by the end of autumn, but it took quite a while to get to an attractive size and shape and the spring blooms weren’t as prolific, probably because there was less plant for them to grow on.

Apparently this isn’t always the case with Noisettes. My Gardening Neighbour has several and he has pruned them with unfortunate results – a very slow recovery. Certainly my rose book recommends not pruning Madame Alfred Carriere, another of the Noisettes.

I decided to buy a weeping standard for this spot based on this photo in the coffee table book, Rural Australian Gardens. The book doesn’t say what rose appears in the photo but I later found an earlier photo of the same property in another rose book I borrowed from the library; apparently it is a rambler I had never heard of – Minnehaha.

So when I went along to the nursery I had this image in my mind, with either pink or white flowers. On site the choices were either Iceberg or Lamarque and the ever helpful staff recommended this one. It hasn’t let me down.

Thanks for reading. Happy Gardening!