Roses have been cultivated since 500 BC in Persia and China and were well-loved by the ancient Roman’s and Greeks. As Christianity spread through the Roman Empire the rose was associated with the Virgin Mary. This may have been the result of The Greek’s association of the rose to Aphrodite and the Roman’s association of the rose to Venus. The 4th century St. Ambrose, called the Virgin Mary “the rose without thorns” because she was born free of Original Sin, and in the 12th century Bernard of Clairvaux, the abbot, mystic, and co-founder of the Knights Templar, noted “Eve was a thorn, wounding, bringing death to all; in Mary we see a rose, soothing everybody’s hurts, giving the destiny of salvation back to all.” As devotion to Mary grew she became the Queen of Heaven and the rose, Queen of the flowers represented her purity, glory, and sorrow. The result was that Mary was given the title of “Mystical Rose”. Photo Credit: Libby norman, Wikimedia Commons
Many roses have been chosen for inclusion in a Mary garden but one of the most fitting is the Gallic rose (Rosa gallica). It is native to southern and central Europe eastward toward Turkey and the Caucasus and was first domesticated by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Most modern roses can trace their ancestry back to this rose and some varieties/cultivars are well known and still popular like ‘ Apothecary’s Rose’ and ‘Rosa mundi’. The species is a small thicket forming plant up to 1.6′ tall and has straight slender prickles and pinnately compound leaves with three to seven bluish-green leaflets. The fragrant pink flowers appear in clusters of 1-4 and each flower has five or more petals. Flowering occurs only once during the season. The globose to ovoid hips are about 1/2″ in diameter and orange to brown. Many cultivars are available that tend to be 3-4″ tall.
Most roses need fertile, consistently moist, well-drained soil in full sun, in USDA Hardiness Zones 7-9. Some roses tolerate part shade and many are hardy to zone 5, including the Gallic rose, mentioned above.