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Country Living July 2002
BUSINESS IS BLOOMING
Danaë Brook has a passion for roses. First of all she filled her French-inspired home with blooms of many colours from her garden. But then an idea for a new venture took root …
Danaë Brook would rather have a big bowl of roses than all the jewels in the world. From early summer until the last traces of autumn, the exquisite blooms of classic hybrid teas, delicate floribundas and beautiful old gallicas and bourbons scent every room in the French-inspired house she shares with husband Robin Duthy on the Essex/Suffolk border. This is where they both find solace from their busy lives – she as an author and national newspaper journalist, he as an arts journalist and director of his own company, Art Market Research.
Amazingly, they still have time to run their own business together growing roses organically for cutting and selling to top London florists, and this also provides Danaë with a constant source to bring into the house. It is a house worth adorning. Built by the renowned architect, the late Raymond Erith, and Quinlan Terry, who lives nearby, for Robin’s parents about 40 years ago, it stands on a high point that overlooks a tributary of the River Stour and the medieval parish church where Danaë and Robin exchanged their wedding vows.
‘It was built to my parents-in-law’s specifications because for a long time the family had a house in the hills outside Cannes,’ Danaë explains. ‘I think they probably wanted to recreate the shapes of southern France.’
It was Robin’s mother Beatrice who first planted roses in the large beds just beyond the wide stone terrace that runs the length of the house. The fact that they were thriving and that the rose fields of one of the country’s top growers, Cants of Colchester, was but a mile away gave Danaë the idea for their business. ‘We put two and two together and figured this must be good soil and a good microclimate,’ she says.
By March 2000 they had planted 500 roses in a chemical-free piece of pasture by the barn Robin’s father had used for his mushroom business and by mid-June they had a showing of their first blooms; a few days later there were hundreds more. Customers now range from leading London florists such as Paula Pryke and Wild at Heart to local people who call by to order roses for weddings and parties or to decorate their own homes.
After cutting, the flowers are taken for stripping and bundling to the lovely old rose barn, its walls lined with gardening implements Robin has collected over the years. ‘We were glad to be able to use the land and the barns that were already there,’ Danaë says. ‘We had some tables made from huge pieces of timber so it’s all simply done and it doesn’t even have electricity. I use oil lamps and candles when it gets dark.’
Danaë does most of her writing in a little wooden hut by the lake, built half a century ago. What furniture there is – a rustic writing table, a couple of chairs and paraffin stove to take the chill off late summer evenings – she found by browsing in local antiques shops. Danaë planted an ‘Albertine’ rose outside and always keeps some fragrant blooms on her desk. ‘In the house, I think roses look more beautiful in plain glass than in anything else,’ Danaë says, ‘except in the kitchen where I put them in a collection of little country jugs.’ The kitchen has a rustic French feel, with walls painted a buttery yellow, a large stripped wooden table and beautiful terracotta and wood flooring found at an architectural auction in France. Both Danaë and Robin love to search for culinary antiques when they go travelling and Danaë collects old Italian and French country chopping boards in particular.
Throughout the summer meals are served alfresco on the terrace with large bowls of roses decorating the table and filling the air with their exquisite scent. Among Danaë’s personal favourites are the old bourbon rose ‘Madame Isaac Pereire’, used as a basis for rose scent, the velvety crimson gallica ‘Charles de Mills’ and the pretty pink ‘Gertrude Jekyll’. These she grows in her own borders near the house, while out in the rose field she mixes them with the long flowering hybrid teas or repeat flowering modern shrub roses, which are a more practical choice for cutting. Among them is ‘Just Joey’, developed by Cants in 1973, which is the colour of coppery peach – ‘good enough to eat,’ Danaë says – and the delicious yellow David Austin rose ‘Graham Thomas’, which will still be going strong in October.
Danaë, part Irish, grew up in Kent where her aunt, a keen gardener, taught her all she knew about roses. ‘She always said her garden was her spiritual haven and I completely understand what she means,’ Danaë says.