The rose garden

This is Mottisfont rose garden in Hampshire. The old kitchen walled garden was originally planted in the 1970's with pre-1900 shrub roses that were collected over 30 years by Graham Stuart Thomas from the British Isles, France, Germany and the United States. Graham Stuart Thomas was also responsible for 100 National Trust gardens in the British Isles. He was influential in redesigning the gardens to encourage more visitors and the legacy of his work is still with us today.

Our daughter was moving into new uni accommodation and we planned to visit this garden on the way home. With other things to think of - I wasn't very good at multi-tasking on this occasion - I forgot the camera! These photos are taken with my husband's phone, so the quality isn't as good as usual.

  It was amazing sight. I have never seen so many wonderful roses all in one place.

We were quite surprised how many of the varieties we had seen or heard about.

The roses were underplanted with a wonderful selection of herbaceous perennials. 

My mother loved roses and our garden as I grew up was always full of hybrid tea roses. There is one moment that always comes to mind when thinking of her and roses.

Back in the late 60's/early 70's they introduced a new area in the German department store where you could listen to records with headphones before buying them. The first time we saw it we thought it was very novel and my Mum decided to try it by listening to I never promised you a rose garden. She got so carried away singing along and forgot where she was, quite unaware of the looks she was getting, or the frantic signals from my Dad to stop her! Do you have any moments when your parents caused you acute embrassment when you were younger?

Flowers from the garden 

We had a busy week celebrating our 28th Wedding anniversary and we also attended  two great music concerts this week. The first one was at the 02 Academy in Bournemouth to see Monsters and Men.  The venue was formally an opera house and it is great to see it being used for a different type of music.  The other concert was an open air concert by Show of Hands in Abbotsbury Gardens. The original concert was meant to have been exactly a year ago. It was cancelled 4 hours before it was due tovstart due to heavy rain and impassable flooded roads.What a contrast in weather been the two years!


I saw this recipe for Rose Petal jam from the Wonderful weekend book by Elspeth Thompson and decided to try it as it looked quite simple and something different.

Rose Petal Jam
 1 cup of sugar (jam sugar is best but I used caster)
2-3 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons strained  lemon juice
1 cup of rose petals (most fragrant you can find)
 Make a syrup heating sugar, lemon juice and water when dissolved add rose petals and cook gently for 15 minutes. Take care not to boil as the delicate fragrance will be destroyed. Pour into sterilized glass jars. Use to flavour ice creams or sorbets or add to cream when serving strawberries.

It only made a small amount, as you can see, and isn't it a gorgeous colour? It has an unusual but pleasing taste and we will be looking forward to trying it with different desserts.

A big hello and welcome to my new followers Marietta, Lisa at Noodle Bubble and Anne at Life Lack a daisical. Thank you for so much for joining me, With this lovely weather I am spending more time outside so it's taking me a while to get around to reading all the blogs I follow. Wishing you all a good week.

Sarah x