Calendar by city rosarian celebrates Indian roses

Import regulations won’t allow Indian-bred roses, especially suited to climate change, into South Africa, but Pietermaritzburg “rosarian” Jacqueine Kalley has partly made up for that by producing a 2026 calendar featuring some of them. Two, named after South African rosarians Barbara Wood and Sheenagh Harris, feature on the June and July pages, the months of their respective birthdays. The calendar pays tribute to the life and work of the late Viru Viraraghavan who, with his wife Girija, bred Indian roses particularly suited to a warming world.

Roses arrives there in around the 12th century and have cultural, medicinal, culinary and religious significance. Kalley, a publisher and author of Houses of Old Maritzburg, Farmhouses of Old Natal and Sandstone Buildings of the Eastern Free State, has published rose calendars since 2008 while in charge of the garden at the block of flats where she had lived, in Johannesburg. “Our IT guy at work was very proud of his new camera and came and took pictures of the roses.

When he gave them to me, he said ‘do what you will,’ and I immediately said, ‘I’ll make a calendar’.” Kalley has nearly completed a book titled Tales of the Rose “that will illustrate how wild roses eventually were hybridised to create the wonderful roses we have today”. It will tell readers, country by country, how roses travelled through the centuries. It will include articles by Viraraghavan who has travelled the world, seeing it through a rose lens.

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He came to Pietermaritzburg around 10 years ago and addressed a hall packed with rose enthusiasts at Cordwalles Preparatory School. Another local rose-related development in the Midlands is the establishment of a rosarium, used to present and grow various types of garden roses, and sometimes rose species, at Garlington, in Hilton Gardens. Kalley’s calendar features information and anecdotes of its roses, with November 2026 being the Lady Jane Hooker, a prolific climber, from seeds that originally came from South Africa but “sprouted happily” in Viraraghavan’s garden in India.

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