Joyce Barden™

Description

Joyce Barden is a cross of David Austin’s Sweet Juliet and the magnificent old bourbon rose, Souvenir de la Malmaison. It shows qualities of both parents, but leans more towards Sweet Juliet in nature. It starts out as an amber-yellow bud that opens to a light yellow and apricot colour, with a lighter pearl color towards the perimeter. It has a wonderful warm Tea rose scent that persists even in the heat of mid-day, which is a great quality. It is something like Graham Thomas in fragrance, though more sweet. Fully mature blooms sometimes have a mix of Tea and Lemon scent. I am very pleased that it has a nice scent, as fragrance is hard to breed for. This rose has proven to be very quick to rebloom, with short rests in between flushes. The plant itself is vigorous, and quite disease resistant. I have tested several plants both grafted and own-root under both ideal conditions and stressful conditions to determine its ability to cope with adversity. When planted in a fairly shady spot, it bloomed less, and did have a bout with Blackspot later in the year. The plants in an open area with lots of air circulation and more sunlight hours performed much better. These plants had no disease whatsoever, in spite of the fact that I do no spraying in my garden. I cannot offer an assessment as to hardiness yet, but I suspect that it should be hardy to at least zone 6. It seems that it is going to be a fairly tall shrub, as it is now about 4 feet tall with a pleasant habit of branching laterally. Photo and text Copyright by Paul Barden 2007

Introduced in 1998.