Introduction To Old Roses

The Hybrid Masks

Such are the changing fashions in gardening that the Hybrid Masks were held in little regard when first introduced, but nowadays are a very important group of shrub roses. Although they have some musk rose genes in their make-up, they really owe more in pedigree to R. multiflora than to R. moschata. Almost all were raised between 1913 and the start of the Second World War, with the majority bred by an English clergyman, the Rev. Joseph Pemberton. Clearly, Pemberton was ahead of his time: the fashionable roses then were the rather formal Hybrid Teas and Hybrid Perpetuals, and at first no one knew quite how or where to grow these new, more relaxed shrubs. It is a tribute to Pemberton's work that these roses are now automatic choices where continuous-flowering shrub roses are required. Some of Pemberton's roses were introduced after his death by his gardener, WA. Bentall, who also went on to introduce some very good varieties of his own.

In his work, Pemberton used only free-flowering roses, especially those with cluster flowers, crossing them with the more traditional roses of the day, and creating shrubs with larger, more fully double flowers than had been seen up to that time. As the foundation, Pemberton used 'Trier', a seedling from a rambling rose called 'Aglaia' which, in turn, had been bred from a cross between R. multiflora and a Noisette variety called `Reve d'Or'. One of his first seedlings was `Danae', raised in 1913. After this he introduced roses regularly, year on year, well into the 1920s.

Some believe that the relatively youthful Hybrid Masks belong among the Modern roses, rather than with the Old roses, which are normally defined as those that predate the arrival of the first Hybrid Tea, in 1867. In my view, however, the demarcation between Old and Modern needs to move forward from time to time, just as it does with cars, for example. This is the principle I have adopted, shifting the cut-off date between the two to 1940. With this delineation the Old roses now embrace important groups such as the Hybrid Masks as well as the classic early Hybrid Teas. Future generations of rose devotees can move the defining date on, as appropriate.

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