A Rose Garden for Romance

The arbor could, in fact, be the romantic rose garden - if you make it a bower. This would be something like a square gazebo, or a very large arbor, with latticed walls and a gateway leading inside. Roses would climb up the four pillars of the bower and clamber onto the roof, adorning the outside and perfuming the interior. Inside it would be cool and shady, planted with ferns and hellebores and birds-foot violets surrounded by a soft carpet of moss. There would be a bench inside, just large enough for two. A tranquil trysting place, inviting two people to linger and speak of love.

The other alternative is to create an enclosed garden entered through a rose-covered arbor. You don't need brick or stone walls - and they don't even have to be high - in fact, high walls would interfere with the minimum of 6 hours of direct sun that most roses need to flourish. But you do need walls.

Gertrude Jekyll would probably recommend a yew hedge, and while it's true that the deep green of the yew might set off pale roses to perfection, I hate yews. I like box, but it grows so slowly that before it creates an enclosure I would be too old for romance. For MY romantic garden I will plant walls of Buddleia 'Lochinch'. To me romance is painted in pastels, and the silvery foliage of this plant is the backdrop for the tender pinks and whites of the roses I plan to plant. They will also attract butterflies when in bloom - wafting, insubstantial creatures who epitomize the ephemerality of young love.

And inside these silver walls you have roses. Lovers of old garden roses will want a Damask or two for fragrance - I personally recommend 'Celsiana' which covers itself in fragile looking pink blossoms in season. A Gallica or two just because they are roses of romance - many with romantic histories behind them. My own favorite is 'Rosa Mundi' with its red and white stripes - they read pink at a distance, but give a shy maiden something to exclaim over up close. Telling the tale of fair Rosamonde, mistress to Henry II, and how she met her fate, poisoned by a jealous Eleanor of Aquitaine, might give a tongue-tied lover the excuse he needs to turn the talk to love. Should we wish for a slightly more

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