Last month, in preparation for our August blog I met Dacre Quinn-Johnston AKA @cumbriangardener_2025 in his garden (of course) to talk roses, gardening in Cumbria and his love of creating beautiful spaces. 

So, over to Darce...

Have you grown up gardening or was it something you got in to since you moved into this house?

My parents’ garden was managed by them, but my mum did it primarily. My dad appreciated a nice perennial, a nice rose, ornaments and things like that  he knew what looked good in the garden but it was more or less my mam saying, “We need this, we need that,” and my dad would order it for her.

But there was little to no structure. There were a few nice plants dotted around, like roses, dahlias and lupins, but it was quite sparse colourful, but sparse.

Then I started getting interested in how things actually grow the colours, the shapes, the heights, aspects and things like that. Before you know it, I’m saying to my mam, “Actually, if you plant that over there in the full sunlight, it’ll do better,” or, “That one prefers a bit of shade or moist soil, you know, not too dry.”

So, we started moving things around, and before you know it my mam’s saying, “Well, actually, you seem like you know what you’re doing. Why don’t you take over?”

I started working with what was already available, getting things growing and making sure everything was healthy. Then when I started working and earning money, I ended up redoing it  adding more, taking things away, redesigning the beds and changing the layout.

Before you know it, it was a totally different garden.

And it snowballed after that.

 

Why roses?

I wasn’t brought up entirely with David Austin roses. I was brought up with roses from Singletons Nursery and Lamberley, located in Nethertown, the latter is now closed. My mum and dad used to get their roses from there, as well as any other plants that caught their eye.

It was mainly hybrid teas. They didn’t really have shrub roses; it was just an array of colourful hybrid teas like ‘Blue Moon’, ‘Pascali’ and ‘Golden Celebration’. Blue Moon was a lilac colour and was classed as about the closest to blue you could get, Pascali being pure white and Golden Celebration being yellow and Uncle Tom bring deep red. Some of these are actually still around today. (I think).

They had them in a row in a raised bed under the front window of their  house. They were quite nice, and you’d grow them to get those long canes with huge blooms on top.

Then they used to get catalogues coming through, Spaldings, Van Meuwen, things like that  for different roses and plants. This was really before the internet got going, when it was all mail order, and I remember seeing the pictures in those brochures of these perfectly shot roses in estate gardens, all obviously done for the marketing.

There was just something about them, especially the pink roses. There was something really captivating about a pink rose. It was magical and almost immersive, like you could smell them through the page. And I just thought, I want them. I definitely want nice pink roses.

There’s just something really captivating and alluring about roses. They’ve stood the test of time; they’ve been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, for centuries. Some of the roses I have date back to the 15th century, to think that the Tudors onwards had them in the gardens at royal courts is a nice thought.

I think there’s something really nice about the fact that something so old can still feel so modern and still be so in fashion today around the world. 

 

How many varieties do you have?

So, I had 63 when you last came, and it’s now up to 70 overall between this garden and my allotment.

The majority are David Austin roses, with one from Peter Beales and one from Singletons.

Do you have a favourite? Or are they all your favourite?

That is a very tricky question to answer, and I get asked it all the time on Instagram. I like them all, but if I had to choose my favourite overall, I’m going to have to say it would be ‘Jacques Cartier’.

It’s an old, very old dusty pink shrub rose, but  the fragrance is second to none. It’s almost like looking at cotton candy. It’s so nice.

A close second would be ‘Anne Boleyn’ which is also another pink rose. It has good form, a subtle scent, but obviously it’s up there for the name for me really, being a Tudor history fan!

 

You have lots of pink colours, did you choose a colour scheme first or did you find a rose you liked and then choose to base the colour scheme on that? 

So, I’ve always liked pink roses. There’s just something captivating about them. From  looking at them in those mail-order catalogues, they were just so nice.

For my garden now, I wanted to have cohesion, rhythm and repetition. So although there are different types of David Austin shrub roses and old roses, they’re mainly pinks, magentas and lilac tones. They all work together and the perennials around complement them.

So you’ve got purples, mauves, lilacs, soft pinks and dusky pinks, and they’ve all been planted to work together.

I think, with that in mind, it was really about planning the garden around what works together and creating that overall sense of cohesion and structure.

Pruning and dead heading, is there a certain time to prune roses? Are you meant to dead head them or leave them?

Deadheading is important throughout the flowering season, particularly if you have repeat-flowering shrub roses and want continuous blooms. If you leave the spent flowers, they can start putting their energy into developing hips and seed rather than producing another flush. And that’s what you want really, flowers, flowers, flowers.

In terms of pruning, every year you should prune your roses, ideally while they’re dormant, so anywhere from November right through to March. The later the better really, depending on where you are, I suppose.

But living here in Cumbria, with the risk of strong winds and potential damage, I don’t necessarily stick to the end of winter or early spring. I like to do mine around December, usually around Christmas actually. I’ll take away all the leaves, reduce the stems down to a size I’m happy with and clear away any fallen debris from the ground, just making everything really tidy.

At the same time, I tidy up the rest of the garden and cut back the perennials, so everything is tidied away ready for the regrowth to come through in spring. It makes spring a little bit more manageable for me because a lot of that clearing away has already been done.

When pruning, I’ll also remove anything dead, damaged or diseased, the three Ds which helps maintain the health of the rose.

Some roses can actually flower quite late into the year as well. A lot start packing up towards the end of autumn, but some can carry on almost until Christmas. One of the new ones I’ve bought recently is ‘Desdemona’, and I’ve heard from multiple people that it can flower right up until Christmas, so we shall see!

Then you have roses that develop hips, which can give you really nice seasonal interest and are also good for wildlife and the birds. If you want the hips, obviously don’t deadhead those final flowers leave them in place and let them do their business.

Do you talk to your roses? 

I don't no, I hear people do but I don't, I've usually got my headphones on listening to music or a podcast  just pottering about or one of the dogs will be in the garden with me and I'm just minding my own business getting on with it. 

 

What advice do you have if someone wants to grow a rose for the first time is there an easy one? Is one that will grow in a pot easier than a climber etc? 

I feel like it should be a really easy question, but I don’t know if it is! I think if you’re passionate about roses  or any plant for that matter and you want to enjoy them, you’ll naturally want to learn about them and understand how they grow so you can get the best out of them.

Roses aren’t cheap; they’re an investment, so you really want to get the best value for your money. My advice would simply be to read up, learn, ask questions, visit places and actually see how roses grow. Don’t be afraid to ask the salespeople in garden centres either. Sometimes they’re some of the most knowledgeable people you can ask for advice.

There are so many resources available now as well, social media, online shops, AI, there’s a huge amount of information out there.

If somebody asked me to recommend a rose for their first one, I’d probably say ‘Elizabeth’. She’s fairly new to David Austin and was named after the late Queen. She can grow in a pot, but she’ll also do really well in the ground.

To be fair, all roses naturally do well in the ground where they’ve got plenty of room for their roots, but if you are growing one in a pot, I’d make sure it’s a minimum of around 45cm wide and at least 50cm deep. The bigger the better, really.

If you can afford it, go big or go home!

Have you seen Beauty and the Beast? There's a rose on that that is what I think of when I picture a rose, do you know a real rose that is close to what that one would be?

One that comes to mind is an Hybrid tea rose I don't know if it's still going it's called "Uncle Walter". It could be an older French variety though that was the inspiration. 

 

Do you have a rose that reminds you of someone/somewhere? 

 

There are a couple. For me, it’s more about periods of history, as well as a friend who passed away a couple of years ago.

I have the ‘Anne Boleyn’ rose, which is obviously named after Henry VIII’s second wife, Queen Anne Boleyn. Being a big fan of Tudor history, that one is quite important to me and has its own significance within the garden.

The rose I mentioned earlier which dates as far back as the 15^th century is ‘Rosa Mundi’ that always makes me think about the Tudors and Elizabethan’s looking at that when in bloom.

Then there’s a rose that belonged to my friend who passed away in 2022. I’d originally bought it for him for his birthday. I actually don’t remember the name of it.  it was just a little patio rose  but after he passed away, it came back to me.

I look after it now and, yea, it’s just his rose.

How long do they take from bare root to looking like a rose plant? 

 

It can vary. I’ve had some that have been planted bare root during the dormant season and then absolutely shot up throughout the next growing season and done really well.

Then I’ve had others that have grown significantly slower. They’ve bloomed, but they haven’t got particularly tall or flowered as freely as they would once they’ve matured.

So there really is no guarantee or set timescale. Each rose will do its own thing at its own pace.

Picture of new growth

Sorry to go back, but when you are dead heading how far do you go down, do you just take the head off, so you go back to the next flower/leaves where do you go to?

So you go back to where there are five leaves, ideally. (I audibly gasped at his point, I will confess.)

If you cut further up, you might get something, but it could be weak or scraggly on a weaker stem. So I go down to a healthy set of five leaves, ideally with an outward-facing bud, so that it encourages the rose to grow outwards and upwards, almost in a goblet shape.

That promotes good airflow and, basically, good rose hygiene and plant maintenance.

I also cut on an angle so that when water hits it, it runs away from the leaf axil. You don’t want water pooling around that little side shoot. That bud, with watering and feeding, will then break into growth and produce your next flowering shoot.

 

After more chatter of rose chilli sauce and Turkish delight, I had to leave the beautiful surroundings of Dacre's garden and company, I'm sure we will be meeting again come Winter when he starts his next project and plants new bare root roses with our peat free compost and tucked in with our decorative bark mulch!

If you have been inspired to plant a rose, please do tag us on Facebook or Instagram, we would love to see!