A garden where climbing roses have been tried
Puutarha (Garden) magazine No 12, December 1st 1928
Climbing roses!
Who would not have dreamed of having them thrive in Finland too! We almost enviously look, unless we have been to England ourselves, at pictures of English climbing roses, whose beauty, whether they cover alleys, walls or slopes, seems to be the pinnacle of all floral splendor. And when we hear that they have been made to thrive in nearby countries at the same latitude, even occasionally somewhere in southern Finland, we begin to believe that eventually they will also find their way to us permanently, even if they have to, since we really want them.
Gardener H. Wasastjerna in Grankulla has dreamed about this more than anyone else, and has even taken unique measures. He has created his own Finnish climbing rose. Yes, — but the matter is still not finished yet. An unexpected accident has just occurred. The climbing rose, which has been climbing the southern wall of his villa for several years, reaching a height of 3-4 meters and flowering very abundantly, froze to a large extent in the early winter of 1927. — Then everything is in vain, the reader thinks. Not so, we must try again. The winter was of a rare quality. The rose has withstood all the cold, so there was no fault in it. In the said early winter, it rained for a long time, the roots of the plants had to stand in the sodden soil, almost in water. Then it got cold, and the water froze. You were the reason for that! — No covering is of any use to such a thing. The mentioned winter did not destroy the fruit trees, but it did destroy many perennials, including the autumn phlox in many places, and of course the climbing roses, where they were, were gone.
However, this one survived and rose to a height of about a meter the following summer, but did not bloom. Last summer it started to bloom again. It is noteworthy that this rose has never been covered. Its developer wants to harden it for our conditions. The quality is modest, but it is “ours”. It was created as a cross between the hardy shrub rose, Rosa Beggeriana, and the climbing rose, Gruss an Zabern. It does not yet have a name. The flowers are the size of polyantha roses, white, double, and wonderfully fragrant. The flowering, which is abundant, begins in mid-July and lasts a long time. Perhaps it will still develop into something useful. Like so many gardens in Grankulla, this garden has been cleared into the forest. There are tall fir trees around it now, which have been thinned out on the south side. Here we will focus our attention primarily on the area at the end and south of the building. There is a rather large square lawn, behind which is a large, old-style gazebo made of white wooden slats. In the middle of the upper and lower edges of the lawn, inside a small groove, there is a straight narrow bench of noble roses. On both sides of the groove is a ball oak bush. Viburnum vennosum camb., which grows only a meter high and remains spherical without pruning. In the corners of the lawn is a park rose, which the owner himself developed. It is a cross between Rosa rubrifolia and Rosa spinosissima altaica. The bush has slightly reddish leaves, inherited from Rosa rubrifolia, the flowers are white, simple, the underside of the petals is pink.
The year of publication of the Polstjärnan rose is mentioned as 1937, but the rose can already be found in the 1928 catalogue.
A new, hardy climbing rose. This spring, the gardener Harald Wasastjerna in Grankulla is selling a climbing rose, which he commissioned and named “Polstjärnan”, which is so hardy that it is not covered until winter, at least here in southern Finland. The climbing rose “Polstjärnan” is described in Mr. W’s recently published price list as strong-growing, with heavily green foliage. The flowers are white, small, semi-double in many-flowered clusters. The flowering period is late July. — “Polstjärnan” costs 40 FIM per piece.
and managed to grow a couple dozen … sent some to a Canadian hybridizer… now the wait time before crossing time.
