› WASHINGTON, DC, 2008.............
When Mikel and I got together, neither of us had ever grown roses. We always liked having fresh flowers in the house, but we were always disappointed in the perfectly-shaped florists’ roses that had no scent whatsoever. And so we dug into rose gardening with a passion, even in the tiny patch of land that was our dooryard in DC. Back in hot and humid South Carolina, it was a constant struggle against black spot, but in DC we didn’t have anywhere near the problems that we had had down south. Even when it was hot, the cool nights saw bloom after bloom after bloom appear on our handful of bushes. The varieties we have grown are all fragrant roses, among them Abraham Darby (a cross between a climber and a floribunda, one of David Austin’s modern roses that looks and smells like an old-fashioned pink English cabbage rose), Mister Lincoln (a deep red, fragrant hybrid tea rose, long an American favorite), and, our hands-down favorite, Papa Meilland, which is supposedly a clone of Mister Lincoln, though some sources say that it was introduced in 1963, a year before the Lincoln. They’re both glorious roses, but I dare anyone to show me another rose that is more fragrant than the Meilland. Mister Lincoln is the standard-bearer of long-stemmed, fragrant, deep red roses in the United States.
