Miniature Buttonhole Roses

It was with great delight this week that I picked for the first time the delicate little polyantha roses we planted in the winter, and made them up into dainty buttonholes for the happy country wedding of Jenny and Josh last weekend.  These lovely healthy little plants have the most exquisite, porcelain-looking little flowers, perfect from bud stage to fully blown.  Last year we grew the apricot-coloured polyantha Perle d'Or, and it flowered all the way through the summer, peachy and pretty in the garden next to phlox 'Creme Brulee', and delectable picked in little vases in the bothy and in the cottage kitchen, or worked into sweet floral crowns and tonal buttonholes.  The new varieties we have are Cecile Brunner, soft pink, and White Cecile Brunner, a pure snowy white.  They are so pretty.  In these buttonholes I grouped the roses with lady's mantle and love-in-a-mist, and a few pieces of sweet Williams.  Very old-fashioned, very rustic, and very romantic.