Lady of Shalott® Shrub Rose Bushes

Lady of Shalott David Austin Rose Plants (Ausnyson)

David Austin's roses are nothing if not reliable: his ability to breed roses that repeat flower all summer and autumn is legend, and he always manages to harness this modern trait with the romance and beauty of old English Roses. The Lady of Shalott rose summons up all of that romance and beauty in a shrub that boasts petals of salmon pink on top and golden yellow below so that you get this marvellous interplay between the colours that comes across as orange or golden or apricot depending on the light and where you are standing and how well-developed the rose is. The buds are orange and then develop to a rose which is chalice shaped with about sixty petals loosely arranged within so that there is real depth to the flower. The leaves are mid-green, highly disease resistant and are red bronzed in tone when young. It is a bushy plant with slightly arching stems and reliably repeat flowers all summer and into autumn. The scent is light tones of cloves and spiced apples.

See our full range of roses.

Courting the Lady of Shalott

In spite of her impeccable pedigree, the Lady of Shalott is in fact incredibly easy to please and will put up with less than palatial standards of soil, site and sunshine. This is a rose that flourishes almost anywhere and David Austin advises her suitability for inexperienced gardeners. Give her sway over a whole area of your garden and you will be thrilled with the effect. Equally, it is always a good idea not to succumb to monoculture in a garden to try to encourage lots of different pollinating and anti-pest insects into the garden; think about underplanting Lady of Shalott roses with Nepeta Walker's Low and searching out some of the Achilleas or Yarrow plants with their range of orangey/red flat top flowers to mix up spires, chalices and tonsures in one flower bed. Being slightly rangy, Lady of Shalott is best sited in the middle or back of a herbaceous border and Heucheras are always good at covering up the bare bits at the bottom of a rose's stem - Plum Pudding is lovely. If you want to ring the changes and have a shrub rose display we could recommend the similar coloured The Lady Gardener or Grace or the yellow single rose Golden Wings or definitely Golden Celebration but do not be restricted by those - there are other wonderful choices to make. The Lady of Shalott colours look particularly fetching against walls - brick or stone, and you might want to pop a climbing rose in the background for contrast - or just for company.

Features

• Height: up to about 1.4m
• Width: up to 1m
• Colour: orange/yellow - salmon pink/apricot
• Shape of flower: chalice and double
• Size of flower: Up to 10cm (4") across
• Scent: light, spiced apple and cloves
• Flowering: repeat through summer to frosts
• Group: English Shrub Rose
• RHS Award of Garden Merit

Did You Know?

David Austin named this rose for the Tennyson society and for the 200th anniversary of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's birth. Perhaps the latter's most famous poem tells the story of The Lady of Shalott, who lived in a castle close to King Arthur’s Camelot and was held in a spell. There is much mention of willows in the poem....and we sell them too for those who want to recreate the Camelot experience.....

The Lady of Shallot, on the other hand, was King Arthur's greengrocer: a lovely woman whose banter was so charming that no one minded her smelling of onions all the time.