My wife loves gardening. She particularly loves roses, especially David Austin roses. She recently found some good local sources for such roses and she’s acquired a number of new ones for the garden.

For those, like me, who might not know who David Austin was he was the great guru growers of English roses. According to Wikipedia:

David Charles Henshaw Austin OBE (16 February 1926 at Albrighton – 18 December 2018 in the same village) was a British rose breeder and writer who lived in Shropshire, England. His emphasis was on breeding roses with the character and fragrance of old garden roses (such as gallicas, damasks and alba roses) but with the repeat-flowering ability and wide colour range of modern roses such as hybrid teas and floribundas.

You note from the above that he recently passed away, but his spirit lives on – and so does his company. Consequently I seem to have become, at least temporarily, a rose photographer. So far 12 of the new roses have opened up and I’ve been asked to take pictures of them (see future posts).

I’m not much of a gardener, but I have to admit that they’re pretty spectacular.

Above: Queen of Sweden with bug.

Taken with a Sony A77II and Minolta Maxxum AF 50mm f2.8 Macro.