The Hybrid Musks

FRANCESCA

Hybrid Musks are a rose group that should be represented in every country garden- not just for their exquisite fragrance and prolific blooming periods, but for their lovely abandoned arching habit.

There is quite a good representation of the Hybrid Musk family grown here at Eurimbla ...Francesca (as pictured above); Buff Beauty; Felicia; Cornelia; Kathleen; Moonlight; Pax; Bloomfield Dainty; Bishop Darlington; Prosperity; Penelope; Lavender Lassie, Bonn and Eva. I also love Trier, the rose which was instrumental in the Reverend Joseph Pemberton's early 20th Century quest to create the family of roses now known as hybrid musks.

Trier is a repeat flowering rambling rose, but I grow it in several places as a self-supporting shrub rose, and it mounds up into a beautiful, healthy shrub over six feet by eight feet. During flowering Trier fills the air for some distance with its musk scent, a trait which has been passed on to its hybrid musk descendants. Trier is the background rose behind Francesca in the above photos.

The hybrid musks are excellent roses to grow as single specimens, or as a beautiful hedge comprised of either mixed or single varieties. I grow Francesca as a short hedge lining either side of a path from our front gate- six on each side. In hindsight I would chose another variety of hybrid musk for such an important job due to the fact that in my garden she has a magnificent and early spring display, then tends to drop her leaves and look tatty until the next new flush of growth and buds. This trait is barely even noticable when she is grown in a mixed border with other roses or plants, but when it occurs in a hedge of ten the effect is far from spectacular. I suppose spraying would make a difference, but spraying is something than very rarely occurs in this garden..on the whole, the roses are left pretty much to their own devises.