Most of the plants we grow have open flowers with plenty of pollen and nectar for insects, but Rose ‘Aloha’ has closely packed pink petals. It offers little reward for pollinators (though hopefully shelter for earwigs). It nonetheless has a place in the garden because it is a beautiful plant. The flowers have a delicious, rather fruity scent and are produced in May and June. The rose repeat flowers later in the year if you remove the dead flower heads.

Today, the last of 2020, is the coldest of the year here in Norfolk.  But much of December has been mild and wet, so ‘Aloha’ is still in bloom.

Rose ‘Aloha’ in this morning’s sharp frost.

Our Rose ‘Aloha’ is now over seven years old.

In July 2013 my friend Rosemary (who sadly died of cancer a couple of years later) drove me out to the Peter Beales Garden Centre on the western edge of Attleborough. We enjoyed many plant hunting trips together and the back of her car was always full of our purchases after a day out. If the nursery or garden centre had a cafe that was an added bonus.

This time we had gone to look at and buy roses – I wanted a couple more for the back garden. Roses can be bought as bare root specimens or as container grown plants. If you want to save money or establish roses in winter, the bare root option is a good one to choose and you may also have a greater range of varieties to choose from. But a visit in summer means you can see roses in flower and sample their flower colour, shape and scent. And I wanted roses there and then – I didn’t have the patience to wait until winter.

I planted ‘Aloha’ in our front garden, hoping it would grow up the trellis by the front door. However, the place I’d chosen was very hot and sunny in summer and had rather limited space for roots. The rose battled on and flowered for a couple of years but it clearly wasn’t happy, so I moved it to the back garden. Its place was taken up by a thriving Chocolate Vine, Akebia quinata, which now provides welcome shade for the front door, as well as flowers and – in 2020 – fruit, although it has to be kept in check if we are to receive any post.

The rose did better in its new home but was a bit too tucked away in a shady corner, so once I had removed our Gunnera manicata (note 1) I moved the rose a few feet out from its wall, so it could climb in front of our large, evergreen Japanese Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica). It loves its new home, which is sheltered and south facing, but with some shade at its roots.

There are some lessons here about finding the right place for plants. Learn from your mistakes and don’t be afraid to move a plant to a better place if it isn’t doing well or could do better in a more suitable spot in the garden. ‘Aloha’ seems to have finally found a good home.

Rose ‘Aloha’ with Lonicera japonica and Clematis ‘Little Bas’.

Rose ‘Aloha’ is a climbing rose. “The Quest for the Rose” by Roger Philips and Martyn Rix (BBC Books, 1993), which I inherited from my Dad, says it is “a superb shrub or low climber”, which is a good description.My plant has reached about seven feet (2 metres) tall and has a spread of about six feet (1.8 metres).

I don’t think it will get much taller in my sandy loam but greater heights are apparently possible: the RHS gives a height of 2.5 – 4 metres (8 – 13 feet) after 2 – 5 years, Peter Beales says 10 feet (3 metres) and David Austin Roses gives a height of 12 feet (3.6 metres).

‘Aloha’ is a Hybrid Tea rose and in my experience these roses often suffer from a whole raft of fungal diseases such as black spot and mildew. However, Rose ‘Aloha’ is has good disease resistance and with dark, leathery foliage my plant has been a picture of good health, in spite of its past ill treatment.

‘Aloha’ dates from 1949 and was raised in the United States by Eugene Boerner (1893 – 1966), who worked for the  Winconsin firm of  Jackson and Perkins. It is the offspring of a cross between roses ‘Mercedes Gallant’ and ‘New Dawn‘ (note 2).