Pickering's Four Seasons

class: Portland
photographed by Daphne Filiberti in her garden

'Pickering's Four Seasons Rose', also known as 'Royal Four Seasons', sometimes has roses with buttoneyes. At other times the roses are informal, with ruffled petals like 'Autumn Damask'. In Spring the roses are richly scented of damask and a note of violet. They haven't been as fragrant in the fall, but are still a nice addition to potpourri.

The rose is upright and about three feet in my garden. Leonie Bell classified the rose as a Four Seasons. She wrote that Richard Thomson imported the rose, which was labeled as 'Four Seasons', from the nursery of Chedane-Guinoisseau in France. She believed the rose was a seedling of the Four Seasons Rose. She traced the rose back to Miellez and Desportes' list of 1828, although she commented the rose could be much older.