Rose Roseraie de l’Hay

”Roseraie de l’Hay” is one of the grand old Rugosa hybrids: a vigorous, heavily armed shrub carrying large, richly colored purplish-crimson flowers with a perfume that is consistently described as strong, spicy, and deeply rose-like. It combines the sensuality of an old garden rose with the leathery foliage, weather tolerance, and practical toughness that made Rugosa roses so important in cool-climate and exposed gardens. The flowers are conspicuous and memorable, yet the plant remains useful as a hedge, specimen shrub, or durable boundary rose. Its long garden life, capacity to thrive in difficult positions, and continued recognition as a garden-worthy cultivar explain why it has never really fallen out of serious cultivation.

DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIETY

Like the best roses of the Rugosa line, "Roseraie de l’Hay" bears the thick, corrugated, glossy foliage, dense armature, and robust constitution associated with Rosa rugosa; unlike many simpler Rugosa forms, however, it produces larger and fuller flowers of notably rich, velvety coloring, with a looser, more sumptuous floral texture that gives it a recognizably old-rose presence. It represents a particularly successful intersection between wild strength and cultivated drama. The flower color is variously described as deep crimson-purple, purplish-crimson, wine-red, magenta-crimson, or carmine with violet overtones, which is less a contradiction than a fair reflection of how the bloom responds to age, weather, and light. Even now, well over a century after its introduction, it remains one of the most popular Rugosa Hybrids.

It offers strong fragrance without coddling, performs credibly in poorer and more exposed ground than many large-flowered roses, and brings structure as well as bloom. It is especially valuable when a gardener wants a rose to read as an actual shrub, substantial and architectural, rather than as a pampered florist’s plant. In mixed borders it gives a dark, resinous, rough-leaved mass against which finer perennials look all the more delicate; in a hedge it becomes both ornamental and defensive; in a collector’s planting it represents one of the key historical achievements of the Rugosa class.

FLOWERING

Flower bud:

The flower buds are very attractive, they are long, elongated and they are deep wine-red to dark crimson in colour before opening; they lengthen elegantly and then loosen into a more relaxed, old-shrub rose style. They gradually open into broad, informal flowers.

Bloom:

The open flowers of this rose are large for a Rugosa hybrid, usually about 9 to 11 cm (3.5 to 4.3 in.) in diameter, though sometimes they appear large, reaching about 12 cm (4.5 in). The petalage number varies from semi-double to double; the quantity of petals varies from 17 to 25 petals. They open to wide, often almost flat flowers, and typically reveal cream to yellow stamens in the center.

The color is one of its defining virtues, running through purplish-crimson, crimson-purple, deep magenta-red, or carmine tinged with violet, and it often acquires a rosier-magenta tones as the bloom ages.

Flowers are borne mostly singly or in small clusters, and the recurrent habit is one of the reasons the rose remains so valuable. Rose "Roseraie de l’Hay" repeats flowering, but its first main flush in the late spring or early summer is usually the grandest, the plant is recurrent enough to remain decorative far beyond the brief and scarce repeat flowering later in the season.

Petals:

The petals are broad and softly textured rather than thickly formal, and often have irregular, slightly crumpled or ruffled edges that contribute greatly to the rose’s expressive quality. They often give the bloom a lush but informal look, making the flower seem more generous and less contrived than many heavily bred roses of similar size. Petal count is enough to create a full effect while still allowing the stamens to show as the bloom spreads.

The colour development of the petals is not static: the richest flowers open in dark crimson-purple or carmine-crimson, then commonly soften toward magenta, rose-purple, or a lighter violet-red cast in strong light and with age.

Fragrance:

Fragrance is one of "Roseraie de l’Hay"s’ is strong or very strong depending on climate and weather, with rich, sweet, Old rose character and notes of clove, spice, sweet. The perfume appears to be strong enough to fill the area around the plant. Because of its fragrance this rose is highly recommended for hedges, paths, and sitting areas, where the whole shrub can function as an aromatic presence rather than just a cut-flower curiosity.

Reproductive organs:

The stamens are cream or yellow and are often visible because the flower opens broadly rather than remaining tightly packed. Hip production is not abundant, it produces fewer hips than many other Rugosa hybrids.

PLANT

The variety "Roseraie de l’Hay" belongs within the Rugosa rose class as a large modern Shrub rose of vigorous and broadly upright character, later becoming open, arching, and somewhat fountain-shaped with age. The dimensions of the mature and well-established plants of this rose vary much, which is typical of a vigorous old Rugosa hybrid grown under different systems and climates. They typically reach an ultimate height of about 150 - 250 cm (5 to 8 ft) with a spread of 100 - 150 cm (3.3 to 5 ft).

It is best treated as a substantial shrub, not a small border rose. It is well suited to informal hedging, broad mixed borders, rose collections, coastal planting, and difficult sites where both wind tolerance and ornamental value matter. For cultivation, full sun remains the best position for flower production and disease resistance, but part shade is regularly listed as acceptable. Soil preferences are broad: chalk, clay, loam, and sand are all admitted by the RHS so long as drainage is reasonable, and the cultivar is repeatedly praised for tolerating poorer soils better than many roses.

For routine management, it benefits from mulching and balanced feeding rather than high-input forcing; pruning should be moderate, with the emphasis on preserving a balanced framework, shortening overlong flowering wood, and removing a portion of the oldest canes from the base as the shrub matures. Severe annual butchery is unnecessary and can spoil the natural dignity of the plant.

Foliage:

The foliage is one of the plant’s great ornamental assets and one reason the cultivar looks great even out of flower. The foliage is dense, nicely covers the plant and provides textured background for the flowers. The leaves are compound, the number of the leaflets on the normal leaf in the middle of the stem varies from 5 to 9, but most often in 7, including the terminal leaflet. The foliage is glossy, corrugated or ‘rugose’, deeply veined, and the colour varies from green to dark green; the young or fresher growth has apple-green colour. The Rugosa texture is unmistakably apparent on this variety: the lamina is thick, leathery, and embossed rather than smooth, and this gives the shrub a coarse but luxurious substance that pairs especially well with grasses, hardy geraniums, nepetas, and other fine-textured companions. Autumn color is usually described as yellow, though in the broader Rugosa group it may wash toward orange tones as well. On a mature plant, the leaves contribute almost as much to the rose’s identity as the flowers do.

Leaflets:

The separate leaflets are generally elliptic to obovate, acutely tipped, serrate, and strongly rugose above. The undersides are paler and commonly somewhat pubescent; petiole and rachis may also be downy and prickly. The overall effect is dense, tactile, and durable, with venation emphasized rather than concealed.

Wood:

The wood of this rose is stout, multi-branched, and structurally honest in the Rugosa manner. Young shoots are green to reddish-green, heavily armed, and often somewhat bristly; older canes ripen brown and woody. The shrub ordinarily begins with an upright and then broadens as the outer canes arch under their own length and bloom weight. This gives the mature plant a full, shrub-like architecture rather than the stiff verticality of some modern hedging roses. In a generous site it develops a thick, substantial framework well suited to screening, while in a smaller border it needs room and selective thinning to keep its outline legible. Plants of rose variety "Roseraie de l’Hay" grow vigorously once rooted and established.

Prickles:

Like most genuine Rugosa roses,"Roseraie de l’Hay" is decidedly prickly, and this is not a minor trait but a defining part of its horticultural identity. The larger prickles are numerous, straight to tapering, and densely distributed along the canes, creating the stoutly defended shrub that makes Rugosas useful as barrier hedges. Practical handling therefore requires gloves and a little respect, especially when deadheading or thinning old wood. The heavy armature is aesthetically appropriate to the plant’s rugged constitution and is one reason it works so well where stock exclusion, deer discouragement, or informal security planting is wanted.

Small prickles:

The smaller pricklets and bristle-like armature are commonly present, particularly on younger shoots, this is not a rose with a few well-spaced large prickles and otherwise clean stems; its armature is generally dense and textural.

Disease resistance:

The disease resistance is one of the principal reasons the cultivar has remained in circulation. The descriptions and longstanding horticultural accounts repeatedly call it healthy, reliable, or very resistant, and those claims are in line with what is broadly expected of Rugosa-derived roses: thick leaves, tolerance of exposure, and comparative freedom from the constant spraying regime once normal for hybrid teas. Although important to remember that "Roseraie de l’Hay", like other shrub roses, may still be susceptible to black spot, rust, powdery mildew, dieback, and related disorders, Rugosas are less susceptible, but not immune.

Rugosa roses are widely recognized as tolerant of cold, wind, drought, poor soils, and salt, and "Roseraie de l’Hay" is regularly recommended for exposed and coastal conditions. The RHS rates it H7, indicating very high winter hardiness in European terms; USDA ratings in commerce vary, but the cultivar is commonly sold as hardy at least in cold temperate regions, with some nurseries offering it for Zone 3a and many others for Zone 4 upward. For gardeners in colder climates, the best practice is to grow it as a true shrub rose, let it mature on a strong framework, and avoid forcing soft late growth. In hot summer climates it can still be grown, but available evidence suggests that dark flowers of this rose do not tolerate extreme heat well.

The name "Roseraie de l’Hay" commemorates the historic garden "Roseraie du Val-de-Marne" also known as L'Hay-les-Roses, Ile-de-France, near Paris, the pioneering rose garden associated with Gravereaux and, in effect, the prototype of the dedicated modern rosarium. In English the French word “roseraie” means a rose garden, so the cultivar name reads essentially as “the rose garden of L’Haÿ”. The original French spelling uses the diaeresis in “Haÿ” while nurseries and trade literature very often simplifies this to “Hay”, producing the now-common market form "Roseraie de l’Hay".

The botanical synonym Rosa rugosa "Roseraie de l’Hay" reflects the cultivar’s accepted placement in the Rugosa group, while the RHS also records the variant synonym ‘De La Haye’.

The English-language synonym “Old Rosemary” is found in modern databases and retail literature, but its exact early catalog origin was not clearly documented in the accessible authoritative sources; it appears to function chiefly as a later trade or garden synonym rather than as the primary historical name.

The wider L’Haÿ story deepened the appropriateness of the name when the town of the garden - city L'Haÿ-les-Roses is a subprefecture of the Val-de-Marne département, France, formally adopted “-les-Roses” in 1914 in honor of the fame of the rosarium.

ORIGIN OF THE VARIETY

Precise parentage is not clearly recorded in a single uncontested form across the literature. Several rose references and nursery records describe “Roseraie de l’Hay” as arising from red single Rosa rugosa material, sometimes specifically as a seedling or open-pollinated seedling of Rosa rugosa var. Rubra. Other later sources have used different suggestions, including mutation or sport status, listing it as a sport of an unknown Rugosa hybrid. Given those contradictions, the soundest conclusion is that the cultivar is very closely tied to the red Rugosa line and was probably selected from it or from a near derivative, but a fully documented, universally accepted seed-and-pollen pedigree was not confirmed in any authoritative sources.

‘Roseraie de l’Hay’ is a French rose from the early years of the twentieth century, usually dated to 1900 or 1901, with introduction generally placed in 1901 and sometimes in 1902 depending on whether one is referring to breeding, first sale, or wider listing. The chief historical uncertainty concerns authorship. Modern registration-style sources generally credit Charles Pierre Marie Cochet-Cochet, a French rosarian, usually as breeder in 1900 and introducer soon after. By contrast, influential British horticultural literature and a number of later nursery records attribute the rose to Jules Gravereaux, a French rosarian, or to his famous rosarium. Reference from Journal des Roses, however, specifically notes that a drawing which attributed the variety to Gravereaux was mistaken, and that the variety came from a seedling made by Cochet-Cochet of Coubert. The most careful historical wording, therefore, is that the rose appears to have originated in the Cochet-Cochet sphere, in close connection with the L’Haÿ rosarium and the Gravereaux circle, and that the rose’s later fame fused those two histories so tightly that breeder credit became blurred in subsequent literature. It is best described as a selected Rugosa-derived seedling rather than as a securely documented sport.

BACKGROUND OF THE VARIETY

The official history of the L’Haÿ rosarium shows that Rugosas were central to that experimental phase, especially in work connected to fragrance and practical cultivation, and the rose alley devoted to Rugosas still interprets them precisely as hardy, embossed-leaved roses of Japanese origin. In that context, "Roseraie de l’Hay" occupies a particularly honorable position: it is one of the early cultivars that proved Rugosa blood could produce not only utility but real grandeur. It also sits near another historically important L’Haÿ rose, "Rose à parfum de l’Haÿ", which belongs to the same cultural world but not to the same securely documented pedigree. That related cultivar is specifically tied to Gravereaux’s fragrance experiments and is recorded with a more explicit cross involving Damask, Hybrid Perpetual, and Rugosa ancestry. "Roseraie de l’Hay", by contrast, appears more directly Rugosa-derived and is correspondingly more Rugosa in foliage, armature, and overall shrub character. Among other classic Rugosa hybrids, it is often compared with ‘Hansa’, ‘Blanc Double de Coubert’, and related early twentieth-century shrubs, but its own combination of color depth, recurrent bloom, and fragrance keeps it distinct.

SUMMARY OF THE VARIETY

"Roseraie de l’Hay" remains one of the canonical Hybrid Rugosas because it preserves the durability of its race while refining it into something more opulent and emotionally persuasive. It is not merely a hardy rose, nor merely a fragrant one, nor simply a useful hedge shrub. It is a rose of character: dark, sumptuous, aromatic, deeply textured in both flower and foliage, and still practical enough for real gardens in real weather. This rose variety incorporated the following unique combination of characteristics:

  large, loosely double purplish-crimson flowers opening broad and nearly flat;

  very strong, spicy old-rose to clove-like fragrance that carries in the air;

  glossy, deeply wrinkled Rugosa foliage with marked ornamental value through the season;

  a vigorous, heavily prickled shrub suitable for hedging, exposed sites, and difficult soils;

  strong cold hardiness and generally good health, while not being wholly immune to rose diseases;

Available guidance supports propagation by softwood cuttings in spring, hardwood cuttings from late summer into autumn, and by budding or chip budding in summer; as with many Rugosa roses, own-root propagation is entirely appropriate where a naturally renewing shrub is desired.

COMPARISON WITH PARENTS

Precise seed and pollen parent documentation for this cultivar was not confirmed in the accessible authoritative sources; therefore, a formal parent-by-parent comparison cannot be made reliably.

COMPARISON WITH THE CLOSEST COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE CULTIVAR

Among roses still widely sold, the closest practical comparator is ‘Hansa’, another early Hybrid Rugosa of enduring popularity. The two roses share strong fragrance, Rugosa foliage, prickly stems, and recurrent summer-to-autumn bloom, but they separate clearly on close inspection. ‘Hansa’ is generally smaller, commonly around 150 cm (5 ft) high, with deep pinkish-purple, more tightly double flowers and a more dependable display of scarlet hips. In contrast, "Roseraie de l’Hay" is usually taller and broader, with a stronger shrub presence and flowers that open flatter and more informally, often showing cream stamens and reading visually as a richer crimson-purple or magenta-crimson rather than ‘Hansa’s’ darker pinkish-purple.

For garden use, ‘Hansa’ is often the better choice where space is limited or hips are desired as a major autumn feature; “Roseraie de l’Hay” is the finer choice where the aim is a larger, more dramatic, more aristocratic flowering shrub with exceptional perfume and a slightly more expansive hedge effect.

USDA 3