Roses just have everything...
Things to do in the garden this week
• Take some time to sit in the garden and smell the roses
• Feed roses with a liquid feed every 2 weeks now that they are flowering
• Prevention rather than cure when it comes to black spot, spray once a month
• Tie in climbers and ramblers
Midsummer and the roses are in bloom, overshadowing all the other beauties in the garden.
If it weren’t for roses, I would be exalting the beauty of Cornus Laura or magnificent Peonies.
Roses just have everything – longevity in that they flower up to six months, many have a glorious scent that will fill your garden on a summer evening and there’s a rose for every location.
They include the irrepressible disease-free flower carpet, which makes fantastic ground cover and doesn’t suffer from black spot (which is the only real problem with roses).
It’s hard to pick one rose above another. I planted a rose called Princess Anne, probably because my wife is called Anne – it’s an old fashioned shrub rose which grows about five feet high.
Plant it beside a wall or a fence in full sun and it produces repeatedly over the summer.
Chawton cottage is, in my opinion, one the best new climbing pink roses. It grows to a height of eight to 10 feet, which is small for a climber, making it ideal for modern fences, which are usually about six feet high.
When you get into the ramblers, which grow up to 30 feet, I have chosen Francis Lester with its apple blossom flowers. It makes a dazzling display when it’s given room to spread, up to 30 feet.
Vechenblau is a less vigorous rambler with few thorns. It produces perfumed violet/ purple blooms.
If you want a real treasure, which grows eight to nine feet high and produces scarlet flowers with exceptionally fine elongated orange-red hips in autumn, plant Rosa moyesii geranium. I even like the sound of the name.
It’s shrub rose which will look at home in the back of a border as well as in a mixed hedge.
Plant of the week
The plant of the week has to be the shrub rose, ‘Lavender dream’.