Gertrude Jekyll’s hands were always busy. As a young woman, they held paintbrushes, mixing colours, shaping light. When her eyesight faded, she turned to the land, using soil as her canvas and plants as her palette.

She designed gardens as if they were paintings, layering soft pastels against rich, velvety hues, letting colours blend and fade like brushstrokes on a canvas. Her borders were structured but never rigid, full of movement, where one plant melted into the next. She had an instinct for placing roses among perennials, letting their heady fragrance drift through clouds of lavender and catmint, or weave through silver-foliaged shrubs.

Jekyll believed in gardening with the seasons, letting plants grow into themselves rather than forcing perfection. She wrote about it in Wood and Garden (1899), a book that reads as intimately as a diary, filled with observations of the changing months, of quiet details like the way a rose's perfume lingers in the evening air.

She favoured richly scented, old-fashioned roses, the kind that draw you in rather than shout for attention. The Gertrude Jekyll rose (Ausbord), with its deep pink petals and warm, nostalgic fragrance, carries something of her spirit - timeless, deeply felt, never showy but always present.

Where Jekyll painted with plants, Vanessa Bell painted in bold, striking strokes, both on canvas and in life. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group, she was known for her artistic vision, her unorthodox approach to creativity, and the way she blurred the lines between art, home, and garden.

At Charleston, her Sussex home, the garden was as much a canvas as the walls inside. She favoured a loose, natural style where colour was the guiding force. Roses mingled with cottage flowers, and the garden felt as expressive and layered as one of her paintings. She believed gardens should be lived in, where flowers weren’t simply displayed but became part of the everyday rhythm of life.

Vanessa Bell’s love of colour and movement is beautifully captured in the rose named after her. Vanessa Bell^®(Auseasel) opens from pink-tinged buds into medium-sized cups of soft yellow, paling to white at the edges, each with a rich yellow eye. Its scent, reminiscent of green tea with notes of lemon and honey, is both fresh and nostalgic, much like her art. The rose’s soft yet radiant presence embodies Bell’s approach to beauty - expressive, harmonious, and deeply personal.

Her legacy lives on not only in her art but in the many books written about her and the Bloomsbury Group, a collective of writers, artists, and thinkers who redefined creative expression in the early 20th century. Like her paintings, her influence lingers in the pages of biographies and the stories told about Charleston’s gardens, where art and nature intertwined seamlessly.