Walking around the garden two evenings ago, the weather was mild and calm. The scent from Rosa ‘Ritausma’ was strong and sweet.
It is a large shrub rose, a R. Rugosa hybrid, with typical ruffled leaves, repeat flowering and never troubled by disease.
I bought it in Estonia, it was bred in Latvia, back in 1963. It is my kind of rose, trouble free and perfumed like Turkish delight.
Beside it grows Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Diabolo d’Or’, a wonderful foliage plant, dark copper leaves that have a golden tingle when emerging in spring. The flowers at this time of year are a bonus, the icing on this devilishly good cake, Diabolo means Devil.
Physocarpus is also known as nine bark, it has attractive peeling bark, adding winter interest to this deciduous shrub. Mine is trained on a stem, which did from a cutting, but I am glad to see that there are plants now available in the garden centre of stem trained Physocarpus. (In Johnstown Garden Centre).
In front of the rose and Physocarpus are a couple of alliums, the dark purple Allium atropurpureum and a new variety for my called Allium ‘Violet Beauty’.
Ciaran The Gardener 