The Queen Elizabeth rose

I love roses, so it is a little strange that I don't have any in my garden. I did try, albeit rather halfheartedly, last year - with a bare root 'New Dawn' (now dead) and a potted 'Kronborg' castle rose, which appears to be alive, but I've planted it in a shady area of my kitchen garden, thus I'm not expecting masses of gorgeous blooms...

So I'm thinking I'll really make an effort this time.

I read the entire chapter on roses in my gardening bible, trawled the internet for ideas and decided on where to put it - a nice little rose-sized spot in the flowerbed next to the front door (recently freed from the clutches of the mega-invasive alchemilla (daggkåpa)) - and set off for the local garden centre. 

I felt like such an addict! :) Gently persuading the staff to open boxes of newly delivered plants and spending ages trying to choose between them all, while they looked on in amusement. Having eventually decided upon a Queen of Denmark, I quickly changed my mind in favour of Fantin Latour. This process went on for a while... Ho hum...

Happy however with my choice I made my way to the checkout, only to be stopped in my tracks by the owner, Gudrun, telling me my little rosebush was still hibernating. Gah! Back to the very patient staff... :)

Aaaaannnyyywaaaayyyy...

I ended up with a nice little sprouting Queen Elizabeth. Which I'm really pleased about. Having now read up on this variety, apparently it's absolutely beautiful and flowers perpetually into the autumn.

Here is my little darling:

I'm hoping it's going to have room, having looked at lots of pictures on the Internet, I'm a little worried that it's going to grow a bit bigger than I originally thought...

And this is what (I'm hoping) it's going to look like :)