A Walk Through The Garden, 2008

'Toujours Gai'

Misc OGR, Shimbo, 2008; medium to light pink with lighter pink to white spots, fully double, moderate to strong fragrance of scented soap. Compact shrub, spreading only slowly; mildew and drought resistant, shade tolerant. To about a meter tall. Not remontant.

'Toujours Gai' is an open-pollinated seedling of "Fa's Marbled Moss." She is, I am proud to say, my first registered rose. I provisionally named her “'Toujours Gai'” when she was a roseling, because when she was just a seedling, she used to make very oddly curled and crinkled leaves. She stopped doing this once she started growing in the garden and has not done it since.

Of all the 2005 seedlings, 'Toujours Gai' seems to be the most robust. She was the only one of the 2005 seedlings who did not go dormant when first planted in the garden, and the only one which showed no signs of powdery mildew when everyone else in the garden was overwhelmed by it. She does like a bit of a lie-in though; though she is the first of the litter to come into leaf, she is always the last to bloom.

Like most of her sisters, 'Toujours Gai' is quite a tomentose plant; her leaves are covered above and especially below with a fine layer of white down. The leaves are colored a fine grass green in the spring on old growth; new canes show leaves which are darker and a bit more blue. When it comes to thorns, new growth makes very tiny ones which fall off of their own by the end of a season, so that old growth is nearly thornless.

It seems to be a common thing with spotted roses of this line that they have very few spots, if any, their first year; the next year, the number of spots increases exponentially. This has certainly been the case with 'Toujours Gai'! She showed only one or two spots per flower last year, but this year is giving the most magnificent display of what just seem to me to be merry flowers. She also has an intriguing habit of putting forth, every now and then, one or two petals which are much darker in places than the others. She will also produce, at the same time, some flowers which are darker or lighter overall than others. She has a fragrance which reminds me of a scented soap. Best of all, she produces large flowers, a full three inches in diameter, which last for at least six days on the bush and perhaps a little longer in the house if you put them in a vase wish a little 7-Up added to the water.

There are about 30 petals per flower, almost all of them deeply notched. The petals typically open a mid pink and lighten to a light, nearly lavender pink as the flower ages. Some buds start out extremely light (on these the flower does not seem to lighten with age), and others start out quite dark, all on the same plant. The petals are often so tightly curled that it takes a while for the inner ones to open. Some of them even require a little help--poking them on the top of the bud will often cause the entire blossom to spring open. Flowers are borne generally two to a stalk, but sometimes there are singletons or triplets. There are plenty of flowers over about a month-long period, which I thing would have been longer had bugs not once again invaded. Whatever those bugs are that drill into the peduncle and cause the bud to fall over dead... they are my Enemy.

A truly delightful rose, very well behaved in the garden and so far a promising seed parent; I have hips crossed to Dragon's Blood, Song of the Stars and Basye's Purple developing, as well as many open pollinated hips.

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