Rosa The Ancient Mariner - English Rose

The English rose The Ancient Mariner® is one of David Austin's latest creations. Like the varieties William Morris®, Geoff Hamilton® and A Shropshire Lad®, it is a large, vigorous rose with an imposing habit, which can create a beautiful backdrop in the garden. The romance of its flowering is matched only by its generosity. It produces large, double, incurved flowers from summer to autumn, in a superb shade of pink at every stage of flowering. From a deep candy pink at the centre of the corollas, they gently fade to a soft pink on the edges, exhaling a powerful fragrance of old-fashioned rose.

This rose, kept in check by pruning, is a large bush reaching 1.5m (4ft 11in) in height and 1m (3ft 4in) in width. Its growth is rapid and vigorous, as is often the case with roses from the Leander group, and its thornless stems are covered with foliage that is not very susceptible to diseases. On this large, well-flowering bush, bright pink buds are juxtaposed with rosette-shaped flowers that are slightly incurved and 9cm (3.5in) wide. They are of a pure and very fresh pink, more intense in the centre, and opalescent pink towards the outer edges. They exhale a delightful fragrance, reminiscent of myrrh.

Of exemplary vigour, even in rocky soils if they are sufficiently deep, the rose The Ancient Mariner® 'Ausoutcry' forms a large bush that will be magnificent as a backdrop, at the back of flower beds or at the foot of evergreen trees such as holly, boxwood or Portuguese laurel. It can also be mixed with flowering shrubs (buddleias, lilacs, Spireas, Deutzias, mock oranges, Kolkwitzias), in the background of the garden. In mixed borders, it will accompany perennial plants, to which it will bring exuberance and fragrance, as well as delicate annuals and even grasses, whose tufted foliage will hide its sometimes bare base. It can easily be trained to climb on a small arch, a pergola, over an entrance or gate, in the company of a clematis, for example. 

Obtained by David Austin in 2015. English rose, Leander group.

Its name comes from an epic poem written by the British author Samuel Taylor Coleridge ('The Rime of the Ancient Mariner') published in 1798 in a collection entitled Lyrical Ballads. (Source David Austin).