Rosa ‘Roseraie de l’Haÿ’ arrived not with grace, but with grandeur.

Unboxed beneath a rare Aberdeenshire sun, she emerged from her cardboard carriage with the slow disdain of someone well aware of her own myth. Known here simply as Elektra, one word suffices, but her full name commands respect. One bloom. One warning.

She came from Rumwood Nursery, packed like an antique and labelled like a threat. The rootball was firm, the foliage already flush with rugosa bravado, and her first bud — a tight scroll of magenta velvet — promised spectacle. She was soaked, inspected, and received with ceremony. Puff wept. Evelyn rolled her eyes. The Trilliums fell silent.

She has been planted in Act II of My Name is Red, beside Geranium sylvaticum ‘Album’ and under the watchful gaze of Trillium grandiflorum. Acanthus lurks nearby, scandalous and sulking. Rosa ‘Roseraie de l’Haÿ’, however, claims her space like a woman who once commandeered a U-boat to holiday in Weston-super-Mare. The border curves around her now. The soil yields. The narrative shifts.

She has not yet bloomed, but she will. Soon. The bud swells by the hour, and one suspects she will flower before her roots fully take.

In her presence, the garden feels less like a space of planting and more like a stage awaiting its diva.
And when she does bloom, it will not be a flower.

It will be an entrance.

Stay tuned.