Where The Old Roses Grow
Petals, Pages, Prose, and Finding the Beauty Amid the Horror of War and Life
I’ve just finished writing an ambitious biography. (Side note: My editor has been chastising me for using that word. “It’s not a normal biography,” he has said more than once. So, to be fair, we’ve categorised as ‘biography / memoir’.) But back to the biography-that’s-not-quite-a-biography… I’ve been working on this story for five long, often faltering years. So I’m grateful to have completed it, and to have secured a publisher (a mission in itself involving several flights to London), and now, with huge relief (and with all things going to plan) I’m about to see it go off to the printer.
Cue the happy dance. Cue the tossing of rose petals. Cue the long rest with a rose lemonade on a Pacific island.
Like most biographies, this book took an enormous amount of research to bring it to floraison. Securing the interviews took equal-parts patience and tenacity.(Some interviewees were famous and reclusive; others were just reclusive.) I spent many long nights during Covid lockdown reading through the millions of words already written by previous, better-educated biographers and writers. And then wondering f I could add anything more? And then, once I had researched the story, I had to find the false-confidence to liaise with the National Trust, who manage the gardens and estates that are central to this complicated story of roses and war. (They are as terrifying and as pedantic as my editor.)
The biography, Where The Old Roses Grow; Vita Sackville-West and the Battle for Beauty During Wartime, is the story of the celebrated, world-renowned gardener, writer, poet and perennially romantic (with women as well as men) diarist Vita Sackville-West. I feel privileged to have written it, given how remarkable she was.
Like the subject of my previous biography – Joan Lindsay, author of the classic novel Picnic at Hanging Rock — Vita Sackville-West was brilliant, beautiful (I think so), delightfully unorthodox and daringly adventurous. She is perhaps best known for creating the famous garden at Sissinghurst Castle in England, which has inspired thousands of white gardens all over the world, but she is also familiar to many followers for her garden books, her magazine columns, her love of old roses, and her extensive knowledge of horticulture. Few gardeners or garden writers match her for her wit, her wisdom, and her ability to toss a bon mot as easily as a foxglove cutting into a summer wheelbarrow. I thought I knew her before I started writing. By the time I came to write about her death, I was silently crying. (She quietly patted her golden retriever who had nosed his way to her bed and closed her eyes. Her husband Harold put a posy of her favourite roses on her bed, and her assistant opened the window to let her spirit be with her garden. It was June. Her beloved old roses were just coming into bloom.)
The most surprising thing about Vita Sackville-West’s garden at Sissinghurst isn’t the millions of visitors it attracts each year – that’s understandable given her far-reaching fame and that of the garden – but the rare and old roses that grow over every archway, wall, window, door, gate and wonky stone path. To see these roses in June, when they are at their best, is to wander among “the loveliness”, as Vita dubbed it. A place where roses outnumber people, where the climbers joyfully clamour over every ancient brick building, and where the atmosphere, the genius loci, is so strong that at times I think Vita is still there. (Once or twice when I’ve been in Sissinghurst’s garden after-hours, I’ve almost expected to see her, coming through an arch with secateurs in hand.)
Vita always knew Sissinghurst would be a rose garden. She envisaged it on that grey, fateful day in early April, 1930, when she inspected the derelict ruin under dark clouds. She knew it would be roses that would clothe her new home and bring it back to life. She even likened old roses to the beautiful, textural velvets and other fabrics that she herself loved.
What she didn’t predict, when she signed the Contract on the estate in April, 1930, was that the Second World War would soon arrive on England’s doorstep, and that Vita would be facing a fight for survival, not just against the Germans that were flying over Sissinghurst’s tower, which stood out like a beacon on the gentle Kent landscape, but against Mother Nature and the marching of time.
You see, Vita realised that many of England’s gardeners were leaving for the war, and she knew there would be few professional gardeners left to cultivate and care for old roses, her favourite flower. The society florist Constance Spry also realised it. So, too, did the notable nurseryman Graham Stuart Thomas. Many others were also aware of the plight of old roses, but it was these three rosarians (among a handful of others) who had the money and the means to not only purchase as many old roses as they could and transport them back to their estates but to plant them in large tracts of land that each had devoted to growing roses. But all of them were still uneasy about their foster plants. In fact, Constancy Spry had bought a huge flower farm for her floristry business but she still hid her roses, fearing people would frown that she was growing flowers and not vegetables to help the war effort.
Nothing seemed safe in 1940. Not even Connie’s secret roses that had been spared from the secateurs. So, without telling anyone, Connie arranged for her gardener Walter Trower to take cuttings of the more precious old roses. He then hastily dug a trench against a north wall, out of the way and probably out of the eyesight of any nosy visitors who might betray Connie. He filled the trenches with healthy soil and sand, and planted the cuttings of the rare roses, where they could be left in peace – safely hidden from the world. Connie hoped it would be enough. She didn’t realise there was a brutal winter ahead of them – the winter of Mother Nature – and the winter of Hitler.
Excerpt of Where The Old Roses Grow. September 2024.
Each of these courageous rosarians continued to nurture their old roses during the war, in order to save these gentle and precious flowers from dying, like the gardener-soldiers they had all known and loved who were falling, one by one, in the mud and sludge of the battle front.
Unlike Graham and Constance, Vita was largely alone during the darkest years of war. Her husband Harold worked in London, for Winston Churchill. She employed a few Land Girls to help, and had a donkey called Abdul, who carried the baskets of garden cuttings with few brays of complaint. But for the most part she gardened at Sissinghurst on her own, trying to ignore the whistles of the planes and parachutes that fell to the fields around her.
The summer of 1940 moved slowly across the Kent landscape. It was a brutal one. In more ways than one. The weather was torrid. The hot days gave little reprieve – to plant or person. Gardeners everywhere worried for their gardens. Some spoke of a drought. Vita was asked to judge a cluster of pretty cottage gardens, but the flowers had all died. The owners were apologetic. Vita smiled sympathetically, and quietly assured them it didn’t matter. June and July came. Vita’s old roses, which loved the heat, erupted into bloom. It must have felt like a momentary pause from the war, a beautiful, blissful, all-too-brief rose-filled season of scent and petal and peace amidst the madness of the year. It was as if the roses were shielding her from the horror beyond Sissinghurst’s walls. On one day, Sissinghurst’s gardeners counted forty bombers and fighters roaring past. Vita kept tending to the roses. The simple act kept the clouds of melancholy at bay.
Storytelling is often about the secrets of people’s lives, the untold mysteries and histories. But what it really does is look for and find the extraordinary in the ordinary. And in doing so, it creates a kind of magic. Just as gardens do.
I adored writing this ‘biography’ about these brave gardeners and their fight to preserve old roses during one of the most turbulent periods in British history. I will write more about it all as the pub date of September gets closer. In the meantime, here are some other roses I’ve seen, as this classic old flower becomes a beautiful new trend in fashion, design, handbags and of course horticulture (where it never really went out of style).
LULU’S GLORIOUS ‘ROSE’ BAG
Lulu Guinness is well-known as a rose lover from way back. Her delicate floral handbags are so beautiful that whenever she releases a new design it soon become a collector’s item. (There are several of her creations in London’s V&A Museum.) This newest addition is a gilded beauty, done in spring yellow with pink roses blooming from the top. It’s witty and pretty and would suit an opera as much as a garden party.
LOUIS VUITTON AND DESIGNERS GUILD – TAKING ROSES TO THE NEXT AESTHETIC LEVEL
Louis Vuitton was mad for roses this year. The windows of the LV boutique were festooned with boldly flowering numbers. I loved how the silk pants in this photo looked like textural leaves. Beautiful.
Designers Guild in London has also released new collections of embroidered fabrics featuring roses, including this magnificent design in yellow and pink. I bought a metre (it was all I could afford!) to make glamorous cuffs for a velvet opera coat – which is in hot pink. It was inspired by roses, of course.
RETRO SWIMWEAR WITH ROSES
Bathers are also being influenced by roses this season. The newest designs to hit the beaches are these ‘rosette’ designs by Sea Level, with roses made from lycra. They look like cute, old-fashioned 1950’s swimwear.
ZIMMERMAN AND SCENT
Finally, the international fashion label Zimmerman has put roses in lots of wonderful places in the designs of its current collection, including this sublime blouse and linen shorts.
And if you want some rose-y fragrance for your home, Glasshouse Candles have released ‘Enchanting Garden’, a candle that smells of – wait for it – climbing and rambling roses. What rose-scented bliss.
This book sounds absolutely incredible Janelle thank you for writing it x
Janelle as a 'PS' to my recent post .....I forgot to mention, I just love the Designers Guild yellow and pink embroidered fabric you shared with us. So beautiful!!