Some of you dear fellow-gardeners seemed to really like that magnificent rose, so I decided on writing an extra blog post on the stunning Mme Isaac Pereire, or short, MIP.
One cannot simply pass by this gorgeous and famous rose - for one, because she is overwhelmingly beautiful , secondly because of her amazing scent that will stop you in your tracks, and lastly, due to her memorable size. MIP is the tallest and most vigorous of all the Bourbon roses, meaning she needs her space, as is a queen's due. 'Extravagant' is the word that describes her best, extravagant the colour and form of her large and startingly crimson blooms, as is her heavenly scent that can fill a whole room with just one single bloom. The intense crimson-pink of the opening bud can show a green eye in a cooler spring or early summer - vastly pretty! With fully opened blooms, her colour will turn into a deep pink that makes us wonder if her blooms weren't painted in oils as we look on. Only in fading are the blooms getting a slightly tousled look and showing a violet or purple tinge. That is when bees love her best! So you see, there is not one point in her long blooming phase, when she is not utterly charming. Her scent is the strongest old-rose scent that I have ever had the pleasure to taste, proffering a light raspberry note that seems to faintly linger in her heavy rose perfume.
Mme Isaac Pereire will be a show-stopper! You should be able to appreciate that quality in her if you mean to give her a place in your garden. With MIP, everything is majestic, luxuriant, even voluptuous if I may say so. She easily reaches a height of 2 meters (about 7 feet), her width will be only half a meter less - good to know if you plan on keeping her as a shrub, which makes excellent sense, for she is a vision in crimson and pink standing solitary in your garden. The easier way to have her, though, is to train her as climber on an arch, a trellis, into a hedge or on a wall. This way you can look up and enjoy her heavy nodding blooms best. But - she will be enchanting as a large shrub, provided you give her a deft pruning in spring. A vigorous multi-branched plant won't mind you pruning her new growth down halfways. Dead and puny wood should be removed. Please, let me remind you that a tall shrub like Mme Isaac Pereire looks best if you give her a dome form.
MIP loves a cool space. Now, that doesn't mean you're supposed to plant her into full shade. Like every other rose, she needs enough sunlight to grow and bloom properly, only that MIP loves her sunlight filtered, or dappled by the foliage of a tree resp. trees, hedges, and the like, or by the beams of a pergola, garden pavillion, or similar construction. Trees and hedges have the advantage in that they create a cooler microclimate around their neighbouring plants - and that's exactly what MIP loves!I wouldn't put her directly next to a tree; by doing so you might risk letting her catch blackspot, induced by the condensation or rain water of the surrounding trees' foliage.
When it comes to health and vigour, the right location counts. MIP is healthy in my garden because I provide her with what she likes:
- a cool space to breathe
- enough indirect sunlight with dappled or partial shade
- organic mineralized rose fertilizer in early spring and after the first bloom
- compost, lava or any other stone meal, dried horse or cow manure (pellets) whenever it's handy
from early spring on till long into fall preparing her for wintering
If you still should happen to find a few black-spotted leaves at her base, just pluck them off, put them in a bin - not your compost!- and let her do what she does best, bloom her head off. MIP won't be bothered by a bit of BS - she is just too grand and magnanimous for that.
"What's in a name?"...The rose Mme Isaac Pereire was named after the widow of a rather successful French banker of the time, who even has a metro station in Paris named after him. It was quite common in those days for a woman to take on her husband's full name and combine it with Mme (or Mrs) as her official address. Mme Isaac Pereire's actual first name, though, was 'Fanny'. I find that charming, and like to call my rose 'Madame Fanny'. A bit of a downgrade for a name for a diva, I admit, but it gives her that touch of 'down-to-earth' that MIP does own, too! The very first name, however, that was given to her by her breeder Garçon in the late 1870ies was 'Le Bienheureux de la Salle' - 'The blessed (or sainted, or the happy one) in the room'. I like to think of Mme Isaac Pereire, the rose that is, in a magnificent crimson ball gown twirling around in a decorous ballroom, the happiest lady of all!