This rose is already flowering in the Summer Border.

It’s an arching shrub about nine feet high and is smothered with single deep pink flowers in June. The bees go mad for it, even on an overcast day like today I could hear them buzzing as they competed for the best blooms …

The flowers just opening have the most attraction for them. It only flowers once but is followed by the most magnificent rose hips.

This is also a beautiful rose. It’s a climbing rose, Rosa Iceberg... but it is not as popular with the bees as the single flowered roses…  it’s much more difficult for them to reach the centre of the flower to collect pollen. The Iceberg rose has a much more upright habit and is brilliant for cutting for the house and what’s more it will flower again later this year, probably well into Autumn.