Magazine  (2015)  Page(s) 22. Vol 37, No. 1.  
 
Patricia Routley. If I Could Only Grow Ten Roses.
Without “Blackwood Inn West” I would pine away and curl up. You can plant this one on my grave please. Rescued in 2001 from a dire position under poplars, it has rewarded me ever since with ethereal beauty and a petal texture so delicate. It has been sent to the Renmark Tea Collection where it looks simply marvelous. It is very similar, if not the same, as ‘Catherine Mermet’ (Guillot 1869)

Article (newspaper)  (Feb 2011)  Page(s) 2.  Includes photo(s).
 
Patricia Routley: Natalee Kuser who had the beautiful ‘Aunt Myrtle’s Garden’ nursery in Bridgetown, used to travel with one eye on the road and the other on the roadside and in 2000 she spotted two very old bushes at the front of the Blackwood Inn at Mullalyup. They were almost in a creek bed, in dire straits from the predations of some mature poplar trees and I later took cuttings that grew. The Blackwood Inn was just 2ks from the old Hawter’s Nursery site and their 1909 and 1932 catalogues had carried a whole exotica of old roses, so the discovery of these roses was all very exciting. I gave the roses the study names of “Blackwood Inn East” (which later turned out to be the tea ‘Safrano’, 1839) and “Blackwood Inn West” and this seems to be similar to the tea rose ‘Catherine Mermet’ 1869, although perhaps not the same. It takes years to identify these old roses, but I was helped by the fact that I already had a named ‘Safrano’ from the Pinjarra Heritage Rose Garden. The “Blackwood Inn West” rose still puzzles me. To me, the bush actually looks like a hybrid tea rose, and not a tea. The rose in commerce as the tea ‘Catherine Mermet’ is a weak little thing, but an almost identical flower to the "Blackwood Inn West” rose. I actually bought a ‘Catherine Mermet’ so I could compare the two and there doesn’t seem to be too much yellow in the base as there is apparently in ‘Catherine Mermet”. Down below on its green canes, it has a respectable array of large thorns. Every upright flower that nods later with weight and maturity, sets a hip. In 1885 ‘Catherine Mermet’ had sported to a paler pink tea rose called ‘The Bride’ and I have this rose as well - a cutting from Rose Marsh in 1999 - and it too is a weak little thing, extremely frilly and a flower to die for and to long to be a bride again. Unfortunately for me it flowers about as often as a girl gets married. There was another sport, ‘Bridesmaid’ 1893 which perhaps should not be discounted, but was said to be a deeper, clear pink rose. Sometimes I have stopped in front of my foundling “Blackwood Inn West” rose and the delicate beauty of this pale pink or blush rose simply takes my breath away. It strikes easily and I sent cuttings up to Perth and over east and the plant now in David Ruston’s garden at Renmark loves it there and is utterly beautiful, but so far, I hear, seems a slightly different colour to ‘Catherine Mermet. I feel this “Blackwood Inn West” foundling rose carries a lot of history in its baggage. Its bed mate, ‘Safrano’ was bred in 1839; the Blackwood Inn was built in 1860; and Hawter took up land in 1895 and fenced his new nursery in 1899. From Hawter’s 1909 catalogue there are seven possibilities, but apart from ‘Catherine Mermet’, I am not getting any closer to what it could possibly be.