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suzy_jackson88

growing for heps

last year

I wonder if anyone specifically grows certain roses for the glory of autumn rosehips. The 2 I grow are both in full, furious bloom, bookending my allotment. The hard to photograph moyesii(cos it is growing in the stratosphere, towering over a cercis and red hazel) is probably the best known but equally magnificent is an immense Scharlachglut, currently invading an equally vigorous rowan. Hard to recall the rose was a cutting and the rowan was seed grown, around 15 years ago. Both are now enormous. Will try (hard) to do pics.


O, and the silver lining with the equally vast Pleine de Grace, is the clusters of intense salmon coloured heps which festoon the Goldfinch rose and straggling r.moschata in a brutally thorny briar hedge.

Comments (11)

  • last year

    My rugosas set a lot of bright red hips. I don't grow them for that reason, but they are attractive.

  • last year

    I have quite a few roses that grow significant numbers of hips. The most abundant are on the rose Morden Sunrise. I have two giant Julia Child roses that set lots of hips. I remember that Princess Alexandra of Kent set a lot of hips when I grew here. I will think of more. Oh, the hips went through color stages and I think red was usually the last stage. Diane


    I did this for fun several years ago and have shown this photo before. These are Morden Sunrise hips before they turn red.

    Red MS hips

    Deep gold MS hips.




  • last year
    last modified: last year

    I have this one...and yes I mostly bought it for the hips (back before the nursery closed, I bought a plant, not seeds)

    https://oikostreecrops.com/products/sweet-heaven-precocious-rose-seeds/


    It's the only rose I currently have. My 'Belinda's Dream' succumbed to RRD. This one is either resistant to it, or it has avoided it so far.

  • last year

    @Diane Brakefield Is Morden Sunrise really only 2’ high? I have been eyeing it as a replacement for my Fighting Temeraire, which is regrettably not available in Canada any more. Those hips would be a nice bonus.


    Suzy, I really loved the hips on R. rubiginosa, though I grew it for its scented foliage.

  • last year

    Heps and haws are one of the great bonuses if you grow many once bloomers (which would be almost all of mine). None of that deadheading business and an extra autumn treat. There are several I grow for the blooms, but they tend to be fleeting - Madame Gregoire Staechelin, my very first old rose, has beautiful (but fragile) sweet pea scented blossom but astonishingly huge heps which looked somehow oriental. The ramblers I love produce huge heads of clustered blooms - ephemeral and transient, a mere three weeks of heart-axching loveliness, then gone for another year...while those same formidable clusters of tiny berry-sized heps are a much more reliable show and a feast for the birds.


    I always admire (and envy) some of the gorgeous beds posted on here because I have never managed to achieve that harmonious look. All of my roses tend to be enormous, unfit for any sort of inclusion in a mixed border. I really should try harder to assimilate woody shrubs amongst the perennials but somehoe, even the supposedly smaller roses tend to become monsters. For example, Scharlachglut...bought as a 2metre shrub, is now towering some 15 feet or so into a seed grown rowan. As for the likes of Moonlight, Wolley Dod, Crepuscule...they are the size of small trees. Am going to attempt to upload a coupla pics - will need to start a new post because I am using my phone...which refuses to be compatible with my PC.

  • last year

    Some pics, I hope.


  • last year
    last modified: last year

    And another.

    Ignore the mess.





    I hope these convey the difference between a garden and an allotment - the general higgledy-piggledy making do, self-seeding mish-mash where 'control' is an aspiration for the deluded.

    Roses are Scharlachglut, r,californicae, r.helenae peking out from a philadelphus, Perpetually Yours and Darlow Enigma - just starting to bloom.

  • last year

    Just beautiful, Suzy! Great photos.

  • last year

    So nice to at last see your allotment, Suzy! I like some wildness. Keep the pictures going!

  • last year

    And here are my first ’Hensoll Harebell’ flowers! There are more coming, and I will sow more of your seeds in the front, where I can keep the strain pure, I hope. Here in the back I also have A. canadensis. Thanks again, Suzy!!!