(1953)  Page(s) 92.  
 
July 1, 1951
The old Madame Alfred Carrière is likewise in full flower. Smaller than Paul's rose [Paul's Lemon Pillar], and with nop pretentions to a marmoreal shape, Madame Alfred, white, flushed with shell-pink, has the advantage of a sweet, tru-rose scent, and will grow to the eaves of any reasonably proportioned house, even on a west or north wall. I should like to see every Airey house in this country rendered invisible behind this curtain of white and green.

(1953)  Page(s) 91.  
 
July 1, 1951
I am astonished, and even alarmed, by the growth which certain roses will make in the course of a few years. There is one called Madame Plantier, which we planted at the foot of a worthless old apple tree, vaguely hoping that it might cover a few feet of trunk. Now it is 15 feet high with a girth of 15 yards, tapering towards the top like the waist of a Victorian beauty and pouring down in a vast crinoline stitched all over with its white sweet-scented clusters of flower.
Madame Plantier dates back, in fact, to 1835, just two years before Queen Victoria came to the throne, so she and the Queen may be said to have grown up together towards the crinolines of their maturity. Queen Victoris is dead, but Madame Plantier is still very much alive. I go out to look at her in the moonlight: she gleams, a pear-shaped ghost contriving to look both matronly and virginal. She has to be tied up round her tree, in long strands, otherwise she would make only a big straggly bush; we have found that the best method is to fix a sort of tripod of bean-poles against the tree and tie the strands to that.

(1953)  Page(s) 117.  
 
Mutabilis, or Rosa Turkestanica*, makes an amusing bush, five to six feet high and correspondingly wide, covered throughout the summer with single flowers in different colours, yellow, dusky red, and coppery, all out at the same time. It is perhaps a trifle tender, and thus a sheltered corner will suit this particular harlequin.
* ...Rosa turkestanica from Messrs. T. Hilling

(1953)  Page(s) 91-92.  
 
July 1, 1951
Another favourite white rose of mine is Paul's Lemon Pillar. It should not be called white. A painter might see it as greenish, suffused with saulphur-yellow, and its great merit lies not only in the vigour of its growth and wealth of flowering, but also in the perfection of its form. The shapeliness of each bud has a scultural quality which suggests curled shavings of marble, if one may imagine marble made of the softest ivory suede. The full-grown flower is scarcely less beautiful; and when the first explosion of bloom is over, a carpet of thick white petals covers the ground, so dense as to look as though it had been deliberately laid.