I started sniffing roses in mid-March this year, in Morocco, where, despite a late start to the season, many were already breaking bud. By the end of the month, they were flowering everywhere, nowhere more prolifically than at the Beldi Country Club on the outskirts of Marrakesh, where visitors are met with two wide beds – fields almost – containing some 15,000 individual bushes. Club owner Jean Dominique Leymarie is proud of his collection, consisting of many – no longer bearing their varietal names – ‘rescued’ from old Moroccan gardens when he began his collection less than two decades ago. Nearby, at Anima, Austrian cult-figure André Heller’s garden, the gardeners cut fresh rose blooms every day to float on the still water of a shaded font. A few thousand feet higher, in the grounds of Domaine de la Roserie in the foothills of the High Atlas Mountains, the roses were...
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