Plant of the Week: Rosa “Aimée Vibert”

There are plenty of good roses which repeat flower through the summer, but this one is unusual in that it only gets going in August and produces big bunches of pure white scented flowers. In fact it is a rambler so it can get pretty enormous. It has good dark shiny leaves which are generally disease-free. The best way to grow it is into some big dull conifer like a leylandii, though of course you won’t possess such an object in your well-ordered garden. Buy it from a supplier who sends the right thing (many don’t) and put it in with a few spades of muck. Then forget about it for five years. Just when you are about to dig it up and throw it away as a waste of space, it will produce several bunches of flower. The next year, dozens, looking bright and fresh just as the summer is fading.