Oh, Eden Rose. How I love thee. Let me count the ways....
I have had an obsession with this rose for years now. I mean, I love this rose. You'd be seriously hard pressed to find me wearing any shade of pink, but when it comes to flowers, all bets are off.
Mom and I first spotted this beauty, years ago, climbing up an amazing home overlooking the Pacific in Corona Del Mar, California. At the time, we didn't know what rose it was.
It is a beautiful, prolific climbing (but can also be trained as a shrub) rose that begins with creamy white buds, and as it opens, it changes color. The tips of the petals are a rich, saturated pink that look like they've been dipped in watercolor. As the flower opens, the petals become lighter and lighter and fade to the lightest blush pastel pink. They are super heavy and have tons of densely-packed petals.
We happened upon it again a few months later on a weekend visit to
Filoli (pronounced fee-low-lee) near San Francisco. The tag deemed it an Eden Rose Climber (the French call it Pierre De Ronsard).
Developed by French flower grower
Meilland in 1987 and is apparently, very resistant to fungus and bugs. The only drawbacks are it doesn't have much smell, needs a bit of shade and doesn't like to get wet. Other than that, in the right zone, these roses are supposed to be very easy to care for! It was also voted into the World Federation of Rose Society Roses Hall of Fame in 2006.
(Another completely amazing rose that I found this week is the
Yves Piaget - it looks like the most amazing peony! You have to look it up)
Neither Mom nor I own this rose, so how I obtained the flowers in these photos will remain a secret.
Suffice to say, it involved a bit of covert operations and a mostly absent neighbor who will never know what they're missing.
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