Wild roses are treasured for their simple beauty. Richard Mabey finds them in the rambling hedgerows of rural Norfolk and explains something of their natural and cultural history.

Wild roses have inspired poets and painters - Shakespeare's famous line 'with sweet musk roses and with eglantine' describing the bank where Titania sleeps in Midsummer's Night's Dream is a tribute to the dreamy smell of some wild roses - but references go back through history to the Persian poets.

Richard also celebrates the part that the robust wild rose has played in the breeding of cultivates roses. He talks to Peter Beales - one of the country's most respected authorities on roses - about the part the wild rose has played in developing the garden varieties.

Producer: Susan Marling
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4. Show less