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Father Hugo’s Yellow Rose

The first rose to bloom in my garden is Rosa xanthina f. hugonis, syn. ‘Father Hugo’s Rose’ — the golden rose of China, as it’s sometimes called. I just call it Father Hugo — like a comforting old friend.

Every year this yellow rose surprises me with how very many buds appear on its long arching canes, how quickly the buds develop, and how very showy those pale gold cups of flowers are during their brief time of bloom. The leaves and buds are tiny, compared to many rose bushes; yet the flowers are relatively large although they’re single.

Yes, it’s an old-fashioned rose.

If memory serves, Father Hugo’s rose was written up with enthusiasm by gardeners as a new discovery just before the First World War: and who Father Hugo might have been, I have no idea. It’s not well known these days, giving way in popularity to the new and improved varieties with a longer blooming period and a tidier habit of growth.

True, this is not a rose for every garden or every gardener.

Winter wind and ice is hard on Father Hugo, breaking the long canes, and it sprawls around and spreads those long canes like a skirt on the ground. Use mulch, if you don’t want a constant battle to trim the edge of the lawn around it, the way my rose edges into lawnmower territory in its growth. The thorns are like organic barbed wire, too, so pruning back the dead wood in the spring is not a whole lot of fun.

But it’s all worth it for the early pale gold cascades of roses… lovely!

My rosa hugonis grows well on a gentle sunny slope at the edge of the driveway– it doesn’t seem to need very rich soil at all, fortunately — where it can tumble around at will. In a small garden, however, I think I’d be inclined to experiment with an espalier against a fence or wall.