Usually, I am quick to blame myself when a rose looks a bit rubbish - I know full well my own failings (inconsistent, unobservant, lazy) so, unsurprisingly, the plants usually reflect the care (or lack of it) they get (or not)........but sometimes, there is just no excuse, the damn thing really is rubbish....and annoyingly, it often seems that these roses are favourites.
Sweet Pretty, aka The Charlatan - I had such high hopes for this little single rose. True, it does not fall prey to BS like some of its relatives and lookalikes (Dainty Bess, Mrs O.Fisher)....but really, it is almost leafless right now...and any remaining leaves are glued to the stem by mildew. Mutabilis (I can hear the gasps) is another. I had thought to disguise it's China twigginess by surrounding it with airy perennials. Oh no.....Mutabilis does not want to share. I am not, though, putting up with any rose which goes into a major sulk because they do not have a pristine square metre to themselves.
Even worse, I am seriously disenchanted with Eyes for You. 'Does it grow'? asked Roseseek. Well yes, it does, with that horrible Rhapsody in Blue gawkiness and angular graceless shape - long, stiffly upright canes with heads of blooms which shatter at a breath and are lacking in leafage. Despair.....but this is being exiled to a backstage corner somewhere it can peek above more mannerly plants.
And for once, I have broken my usual habit of hanging onto things far beyond reason.......off to the compost, these days, at the flick of a spade.