I feel I have to sneak one more rose on this list. Rosa x odorata ‘Mutabilis’ is one I discovered in my garden at work, and it is one of my favorite roses. It’s an old China rose from 1860. True to its name, it is a mutable creature in several ways. It starts the season with a few flowers floating above loose, red-stemmed foliage.
Then around the end of May it explodes in a rather lurid mass of hot-pink blooms—not my favorite look if I’m honest. Too over the top for me, but it does pack a punch.
Then after that big flush it settles back down and continues to put out regular blooms until…well, it was still blooming last week when I gave it a winter prune, and it would probably have continued all winter. This is my favorite state, when the blooms are sparser, floating about the plant like butterflies, but the foliage has matured and darkened.
The flowers of ‘Mutabilis’ also change as they progress. Each bud starts out orangey-pink, and then the flowers open to a copper yellow that changes to bright pink and finally “copper crimson,” according to David Austin (who passed away last week). It’s like three roses in one.
Rosa x odorata ‘Mutabilis’ can also be grown as a climber. Here it is in Charlotte Molesworth’s lovely nearby Benenden garden, Balmoral Cottage, in June, scrambling up a bit of topiary.