The last David Austin rose this week is Rosa 'Bathsheba, a lovely mix of apricot pink and pale yellow with a rich fragrance. David Austin has a number of 'literary roses', including several named after characters in Thomas Hardy's novels. Bathsheba Everdene - played by a luminous Julie Christie in the 1967 film - appears in Far From the Madding Crowd. 

William Nicholson painted this portrait ((1920, NPG) of Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) (1920, NPG) and he also painted her famous shoes in Miss Jekyll's Gardening Boots (1920, Tate). Gertrude Jekyll gardened, designed, worked in partnership with Edwin Lutyens, and wrote many still-influential books. In Roses for English Gardens (1902, reprinted 1982) she explains her colourful, painterly approach and advocates putting roses in loose, natural, mixed borders instead of formal rose gardens. 

Rosa Gertrude Jekyll is understandably one of the best-known and most popular of the David Austin roses; it has a beautiful shape and colour, a wonderful fragrance, is easy to grow and very reliable. It was introduced in 1986, and is named after one of the renowned English designer who created or advised on more than 400 gardens (and was the sister-in-law of Agnes Jekyll). 

Constance Spry (1886-1960) did indeed live a 'surprising life' as Sue Shephard, her biographer, describes it. In 2021, the Garden Museum devoted an exhibition to this 'remarkable woman' who influenced so many aspects of C20 domestic and public life, from cookery books and Coronation Chicken to roses and royal weddings. 

This week on the Post we have roses - and people who have had roses named after them. During his long and distinguished career as a rose-breeder, David Austin (1926-2018) "put the romance back into roses", combining the shape and fragrance of old garden roses with the repeat-flowering ability and wide colour range of modern varieties. His first commercially available rose, introduced in 1961, was Rosa 'Constance Spry', named after the highly influential florist. 

Petrikyvka painting is the traditional decorative style which is so closely associated with Ukrainian folk art. In 2013 it was included in the UNESCO lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage "as an essential component and as a repository of cultural diversity and of creative expression". Despite everything, and like so many forms of creative expression in Ukraine, it is still thriving. 

Polina Raiko (1928-2004) began painting at the age of sixty-nine in response to a series of family tragedies, and in six years she transformed the entire interior of her small home in Oleshky village, southern Kherson. A foundation to preserve it was set up and the house became well-known, attracting artists and visitors, but was then catastrophically damaged by the destruction of the Khahkova dam in June 2023. Its probable loss has been felt throughout Ukraine, and her art continues to inspire.