which you can purchase conveniently through Amazon! This rose is one of the hardiest, which really means something when you want a climber in cold climates
- it is a soft pink color and is healthy- if you try this you won't be sorry. Odds and Ends of Rose Subjects:
Opinion of a great gardener.
Vita Sackville-West on Roses:
"Sometimes someone asks me which are my favourites among the various old roses we grow. This is really an impossible question to answer, since one changes one's mind from day to day. Each one, as it separately comes out, seems to eclipse the predecessor in charm or beauty, but on the whole I am not sure I would not plump for 'Rosa alba' 'Celestial' and for "Fantin Latour". ......How can I describe 'alba'? I am holding up a sprig in my left hand as I try to write about it with my right. I look very closely; I peer. I see the pale pink petals, I see the golden boss. ......Yet all of these close impressions cannot convey any impressions at all of what 'alba Celestial' looks like grown in the open as a shrub rose when those shell pink flowers combine with the blue green foliage.
"Fantin Latour" may have been painted by Fantin Latour himself or it may have been named in his honour. Here, again, I cannot see that it much matters, so long as we get this lovely thing in our gardens, as we still can. It does not grow too large and is a manageable size for a small garden. Its colouring of a delicate pale pink is easy to place anywhere: it will not swear or quarrel with the other colours".
