Invidious

This elegant, perpetual blooming, globular rose, often classed as a Bourbon, is believed to be a cross between a Damask, given its strong, irresistible fragrance, and a China rose with its graceful habit. As with most found roses, we may never be sure, but it is clearly old, and infinitely charming. Originally titled ‘Dresden China’ when it was rediscovered, it was reintroduced by Natalie & Humphrey Brooke when they purchased the estate of Natalie’s deceased grandmother, Countess Sophie Petrovna Shuvalov Benkendorff. Sophie had been the granddaughter of Lev Naryshkin, a Napoleonic War hero. She was the wife of the last Imperial ambassador to England from 1903-1917, and their Romanov leanings were the key reason that the Revolution of 1917 forced the family to relocate to the UK. Sophie illustrated “Forget-Me-Not and Lily of the Valley”, a book by Maurice Baring, and she set up a charity to improve the lives of Russian prisoners of war in 1915. She moved to Suffolk in 1920, after the ravages of the Spanish Flu and the Great War had hit her family hard, and began designing the gardens at Lime Kiln, Claydon to display many unusual old varieties of plants, including a charming, nearly thornless rose with translucent pink blooms that darken to magenta on the outer petals. When the Brookes begin restoring the garden in 1954, they found this delightful carmine beauty which would eventually go on to carry the name of the woman who originally planted it. Today we call it ‘Sophie’s Perpetual’, and these cupped clusters of delight are a captivating addition to the garden.