It’s hard to believe, but these are the blooms of a sick rose. In the spring of 2016, I was fixated on obtaining a clone of Fair Bianca, a somewhat obscure David Austin variety no longer sold by David Austin. I settled on the closest thing I could find: a Winchester Cathedral, which I was able to order from a local garden center that happened to carry a limited selection of David Austin roses. It met the condition of being white and fragrant, if not quite the same form, and not possessing the pure myrrh scent for which Fair Bianca is known.
In retrospect, this was like sourcing a pet through a puppy mill. Generalized garden centers are the worst possible place to buy roses, as they are not experts on plant hygeine, and often crowd plants together where they are exposed to a range of communicable diseases. Sure enough, shortly after its arrival (and almost immediately after these photos were taken), the poor shrub broke out entirely in a gruesome case of powdery mildew. From stem to leaves, there were times you could see a film of fungus trying to make a lengthy dinner of the poor thing. At the time, much of my collection was in its first spring, having only been in the ground for a month, so I was ill equipped to deal with health issues.
Thankfully, this is a tough variety. It took most of that first summer before I figured out how to drive away the spores with alternating treatments of neem oil, liquid copper, and a baking soda-based product called Green Cure. I continued two coats of Liquid Copper even through the winter, hoping it would kill any dormant spores.
The approach worked. Last year, there was no trace of fungus on this plant, and it began showing surprisingly regular flushes of bloom every five weeks, enveloping our back deck each time with the scent of marzipan. It’s a spectacular deck pet, and as it has now built up some size, this should be an interesting year for barbecues.
Incidentally, I’ve found a nursery that still offers Fair Bianca, and have one on order. It arrives in mid-April, is slated to join the other deck pets, and will be rose #26.