It’s been a long time coming, but finally we have roses blooming in the garden. I don’t know why it’s taken so long. We’re quite exposed – the wind blows in across the open fields of North Shropshire. But there’s a native hedge, with hawthorn, blackthorn, crab apple, and others, around the garden. Before we moved here it had been kept cut back to around a metre and a half high, but we’ve let it grow up and fill out, so it should be providing good shelter. This isn’t the warmest area in the country, but neither is it among the coldest. And other plants are no later than elsewhere (fruit trees, for instance). Maybe it’s the soil – dusty, sandy soil wouldn’t be the first choice for a discerning rose. Never mind, they’re here now. This is ‘Gertrude Jekyll’…
And below is ‘Munstead Wood’, another David Austin Rose, though for some reason the company have discontinued it. A shame, because, as you can see, it’s a lovely rose, with a rich burgundy that’s difficult to find elsewhere. I really must try taking some cuttings (don’t tell David Austin!) These pictures were taken during a period of prolonged, mostly heavy rain yesterday, hence the blooms are looking a little sad (wouldn’t you be too?)…
For the past two seasons we’ve had problems with the flowers on our roses. Something, I suspect, is attacking the buds, Sometimes the tops appear to have been nibbled away, so they don’t come out properly. With others, there’s a more fundamental level of damage which results in a completely distorted (often quite small) flower. The yellow rose in the front garden was particularly badly affected last year. Every flower it produced had ragged petals. I’ve yet to identify the culprits. It could be wasps – they’ve been known to munch on rosebuds or, more likely, earwigs – we get a lot of those. But I haven’t caught either of these red-handed. In fact, I’ve not seen any pests actively attacking buds, either during the day, or at night. I’ve not found anything in my mini horticultural library (i.e., my gardening books!) that helps. I may have to ask the RHS (members can contact them for help with specific problems). I pruned off most of the damaged buds and flowers without thinking to take photos, but I managed to find a few that don’t look right this morning. This is a red climbing rose that wasn’t affected last year…
This is a damaged bud doing its best to open on ‘Gertrude Jekyll’…
And this is on the yellow rose (it pre-dates my time in the garden, so I don’t know the variety)…
If any of you have ideas about what might be causing the damage, I’ve love to hear them. It’s always a shame when plants are attacked. But I guess that’s just the way nature works. We have to try and create a balance in the garden and then hope for the best.
It’s been another strange year, weather wise, as we begin to feel the effects of anthropomorphic climate change. After a hot and dry June, July and August were cold and damp, and many plants were slow to get going. I lost most of my dahlias in the cold winter (even those stored in the shed). The one survivor is this Dahlia ‘Bishop of Leicester’, which against all odds came through, despite being left to fend for itself in the border, with not so much as a thin mulch to keep it warm. It’s only now beginning to produce a good crop of flowers.
My ever-expanding collection of Cannas was also decimated by the cold winter (probably just as well – they were multiplying faster than the broomstick in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice!) Growth has been so slow in this (mostly) cool, damp summer, that none of the survivors have flowered yet. They’re running out of time.
The roses were late to flower this year too, and have only just started flowering again, after a lengthy break. These two are R. ‘Wollerton Old Hall’, a new addition thriving against a mostly shady garage wall, and R. ‘Munstead Wood’…
R. ‘Dame Judi Dench’ has proved to be the most consistent for flowers…
Looking at the successes, scabious sown from seed last year were slow to establish but are looking good now…
Geraniums are garden stalwarts, able to do well in most soils and conditions. This one is G. ‘Eureka’…
The single flowers are good for the bees too. As are Hylotelephiums (formerly Sedum) which are coming into their own now. This is Xenon…
Other plants that are having their moment in the limelight, at the end of the season, include Anemone (this is A. ‘Honorine Jobert’)…
And asters…
Which were actually renamed as Symphyotrichum (how those botanists love to make the lives of us horticulturalists difficult!) They seem to love our soil. Curiously Aster ‘Monch’ (which wasn’t renamed) has been sulking since I planted it three years ago.
Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’ has been good this year…
And the Hesperantha’s (which used to be called Schizostylus – best keep to the common name of Kaffir Lily!) are going from strength to strength around (and even in) the pond…
I know from past experience they can be invasive. The clumps quickly become congested and less floriferous. I’ve found an easy way to keep them under control is to just pull out the flowered stems (before the seed is ripe, else they’ll set seed everywhere). A section of plant will generally come out with the stem, but that leaves the newer offsets, which will provide next year’s blooms, with space around them.
Another plant which thrives in the thin, sandy soil, is Gaura (which, you guessed it, has been renamed -it’s now Oenothera lindheimeri ‘Whirling butterflies’)…
It self-seeds everywhere, and creates clouds of small, white flowers on long stems. Very pretty, although it does tends to sprawl all over its neighbours.
Yarrow (Achillea) is a wildflower (or weed, if you prefer) that we let grow here and there in the garden…
This is the wild form of a widely grown cultivated plant. The flowers are actually almost as good as the cultivated varieties, though without the range of colours, and look good and last well in a vase. The foliage is attractive too.
It’s been a dreadful year for apples, with almost all the fruit affected by moth larvae, and many of the fruits small and not properly formed. Keeping wasps from destroying what harvest there is, has been a challenge. Conversely, the pears are having their best year so far. This variety is ‘Concorde’…
It’s been another challenging year. Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from the variable conditions, and weather extremes, is to observe which plants hold up well in your garden, whatever the weather throws at them, stick with those, and introduce others that are related, or like similar conditions. Having said that, I do like a challenge!
It’s now officially spring, and though you wouldn’t know it from the weather, new growth is breaking out across the garden, mostly in the form of spring bulbs. There are still some snowdrops around, but they’re fading fast. Various types of crocuses are out now (though the Crocus tomasinianus in the lawn have been and gone).
We’ve got various clumps of the small, early, tete-a-tete daffodils; most of which were in the garden before we arrived . Most have been relocated as we’ve been implementing the new design.
I rescued a number of dark-flowered hellebores from the back of overgrown beds, and reset them as under-planting to hydrangeas and a paperbark maple…
Elsewhere, this is what we refer to as our woodland – a small patch of ground in the shade of the house and the chicken enclosure, beneath an unusually aged lilac tree. It’s where we amalgamated many of the rhododendrons that were scattered around the garden when we arrived, along with a few pieris. Our soil is neutral rather than acidic; sandy, and not exactly humus-rich, so it’s perhaps rather surprising that ericaceous plants seem to do so well in this area.
One large section of the lilac died last year, and I suspect the rest of the plant won’t be far behind it. We dug out huge quantities of the ‘bootlaces’ (technically rhizamorphs) of honey fungus that flourished in this area, around a decaying tree stump, but inevitably we couldn’t get them all. We have the most common form of honey fungus (Armillaria gallica) which is very good at finishing off trees and shrubs that are weak, or coming to the end of their life. So I’ve planted a replacement in the space that has opened up: a Liquidambar styraciflua ‘Slender silhouette’. This is a columnar tree, so it gives height without taking up too much space. It has glossy lobed leaves which turn the most amazing colours in autumn. Some sources claim it’s resistant to honey fungus (although the RHS says it’s susceptible!)
Many of our new trees, including the fruit trees in the orchard (it’s an orchard if you’ve got five trees, and we’ve got six, even if they are small) are budding. This is a plum. Last year it produced only three plums. If the buds are anything to go by, it should be a better harvest this year…
The roses are shooting too. They are mostly young plants, but I’m hoping they really come into their own this year…
And this tree peony is well ahead of most woody plants in the garden…
The plants are ready for the growing season to start in earnest, and I can’t wait. All we need now is for the weather to get the message!
June is perhaps the peak time for roses, and the roses in my own garden are all in full flower now.
This unknown climber pre-dates my arrival. It has a light scent, and deep, velvety red blooms
Roses can provoke a mixed response. On the one hand, they’re the icon of the English garden, and the nation’s favourite flower. On the other, they can seen as somewhat old-fashioned. I think this is unfair.
Roses have suffered from being badly used in the past. Mid-century rose gardens tended to be sterile and twee, with paths lined with lollipop standards, and hybrid tea rose bushes set out in isolation, often in a desert of bare soil, with heaps of farmyard manure around them.
Rosa ‘Lady of the Lake’ – a repeat-flowering climber with open blooms, allowing pollinators access to their nectar.
Nowadays, the trend is for roses to be more of an integral part of the garden. Modern shrub roses, climbers and ramblers mix well with other garden plants, and can work with most garden styles, from the formal to the traditional cottage garden, and even the currently popular ‘prairie planting’ (sometimes referred to as the ‘naturalistic’ or ‘new perennial’ style). There are roses to suit every style, and in most colours (except blue and black).
When designing my own garden I chose roses from David Austin.[1.] His roses emulate the old, romantic roses, but like all growers, he bred for vigour, attractive foliage, disease resistance, and a long flowering period. Particularly important, he didn’t neglect scent, and most of his cultivars have good fragrance. When designing a garden, this is an important consideration, because scent adds another, very delightful element to a design.
Climbing Rosa ‘Constance Spry’ grown on a metal pergola – this was the first rose David Austin bred. It has good fragrance, but sadly only flowers once.
Apart from the climbers, I’ve used shrub roses to add colour and scent to the borders. They benefit from dead-heading (a job I rather enjoy), but while correct pruning helps the overall shape, they’re not too fussy. They hold their own in a shrub and perennial border, as seen here…
This is Rosa ‘Dame Judi Dench, in amongst the perennials. The garden is in its infancy – both rose and perennials will expand to fill the gaps.Judi in close-up!Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ – similar to Constance Spry, but repeat-flowering, and with an even stronger scent.Gertrude Jekyll in the border, with claret Rosa ‘Tuscany Superb’ further along.Rosa ‘Tuscany Superb’
Roses are so familiar to us, we can easily take them for granted. But we shouldn’t overlook just how beautiful and useful they are in the garden, providing colour and scent, as well as lush foliage. There are roses for most situations, including shade, and many will flower from early June, right through the growing season. Climbers and ramblers will cover walls, fences, pergolas and arbours; or grow up into a tree. And shrub roses are perfect for the borders; used like any other small to medium sized shrub.
[1.] There are many other rose breeders around, producing some superb cultivars. I have to say, prices for David Austin roses are higher than most other breeders. I’m not sure if that’s always been the case, and whether the company are playing on his fame (David himself sadly passed away a few years ago).
This was the ‘wildflower meadow’ in our front garden just over a week ago. For a long time in the early season it was looking quite sparse, but now it’s burst into growth. The grasses have shot up, with feathery flower spikes, and there’s a diverse range of wild flowers, including campion; both pink and fringed (Silene fimbriata), ox-eye daisies, yarrow, and birds foot trefoil. The alliums add interest, even though they’re not wild flowers (well, not this particular variety, in this country!)
This is one of the same alliums (Allium hollandicum ‘Purple Sensation’) in the back garden…
The wallflowers were starting to look good – here against the contrasting foliage of a rose (Rosa ‘Judy Dench’)…
A week later, and most of them are well past their best. Time to rip them out and make space for other plants. I think. Taken from the right angle, the beds are looking quite full. The alliums and wallflowers work well together. The impressive fern behind them precedes our arrival. The yellow evergreen on the left is a euonymus, probably E. fortunei ‘Emerald ‘n’ Gold’…
You can see the structure of the grass path that runs along the left hand side of the garden…
Eventually, the beds will be edged with box hedging (box blight and caterpillars not withstanding) and the shrubs and taller perennials will mean you can’t see the whole thing in one go, encouraging you to want to move on to see what’s around each corner.
This next plant is a beech – Fagus sylvatica ‘Dawyck Purple’. In time it will grow to be a tall, columnar tree. Now, it’s only around four feet high, but the leaves are beautiful…
This tree peony isn’t the one I bought! I think this has grown out of the rootstock (and the grafted plant died). Still, it doesn’t look bad. Peonies don’t last long; only about a week…
The Irises (Iris sibirica) in front of the pond are still looking good…
And these self-sown Californian poppies (Eschscholzia – not an easy one to spell!) are in full flower…
The rhododendrons are coming to a close. They’ve put on a good show, considering they have all been moved in the last year…
And at last, the roses are beginning to flower. A bit late, but it was a cold start to the season, and most of the plants were only planted last autumn. I’ll share them with you next time…
A cold start this morning – the thermometer was showing minus five, and there was a hoar frost. The views across the fields were like scenes from Christmas cards. The photographs don’t do it justice. I probably should have gone out for a walk, but I didn’t have the time, so instead I made do with taking shots out of the windows.
The light was changing moment by moment, which is frustrating, because I never know which is the right moment to take a picture!
You can see something of the structure of the garden in this shot. The grass paths are a feature of the left side. In time, I intend to line them with Buxus (box) hedging. The borders to either side will be filled with trees, shrubs (including roses), and perennials, and in summer the grass paths will be a secluded walk, partially hidden from the rest of the garden.
In the bottom left corner you may just be able to make out the new winter-flowering cherry tree (Prunus x subhirtella ‘Autumnalis Rosea’) which is providing us with some much appreciated flowers in the dead of winter.
The pergola is bare now, but so far it’s been planted with two roses (one, a cutting of ‘Constance Spry’ that we brought with us from our last garden), a grape vine, and a chocolate vine (Akebia quinata), so it should be covered in foliage and flowers by June.
The mature birch tree at the end of the garden looked particularly spectacular hung with frost. It’s already filled with catkins, which give the otherwise bare branches some presence.
Yesterday I was hard at work shaping the pond, but the ground is too frozen to continue with that today. It’s midday now, but the frost has hardly melted. Hopefully the cold weather will purge some of the more damaging pests and diseases in the garden (without killing any of the plants!)
Well, the pond, actually; but hopefully I got your attention! I’ve turned what was once a koi pond, with clear water (provided by some very elaborate filtering equipment) full of colourful fish, and with a rather twee wooden bridge crossing over it, into something horrible.
But as the saying goes, you can’t make a souffle without breaking wind. No, that’s not it… Omelette! – I meant omelette. The fish were taken away before we moved in last year. I stopped using the pumps because I’d seen newts in the pond, and read they can be drawn into pump impellers and killed. The water turned cloudy, only slightly ameliorated by first, barley straw, and then lavender clippings.
The pond pumping equipment – looks complicated. If anyone wants it, let me know!This is the end that goes in the water
You might wonder why I’m bothering to empty the pond. Well, firstly, I suspect it’s leaking, because the level never stays up; there’s always a few inches of the liner showing, which isn’t attractive. Secondly, the shape isn’t ideal. It’s 90cm deep, which seems excessive to me, and the figure of eight doesn’t look right for a wildlife pond (which is what I’m aiming for). And I want to put in different levels for different plants, ideally with the ledges filled with soil to plant directly into, rather than resting plant pots on.
The newts are all out of the water for the winter now (I’ve encountered quite a few while working in the garden – a sharp eye and a great deal of care is required to avoid casualties). Which is good, because it meant I was able to use the pump to get the water out. My attempts at syphoning the water had failed miserably. Apparently you need the end of the hose to be lower than where you’re syphoning from, which wasn’t possible in this case. Using a bucket would have been back-breaking work and taken forever.
The pump got most of the water out, but I’m having to scoop out the rest with a bucket, which isn’t easy. I put a garden fork through the bottom, but the water isn’t draining out. There are lots of frogs hiding in the thin layer of silt on the bottom – as I come across them I’m transferring them to the temporary pond I set up…
I made the temporary pond 60cm deep, because it turned out there were fish in the pond after all – some must have escaped the net; presumably they were much smaller then. They’re shy creatures, spending most of their time near the bottom, but I’d counted four of them on the odd occasion when they rose to the surface, and that’s how many there turned out to be. Only one has orange colouring, the rest are plain, and I’m wondering if, rather than Koi, they’re actually just river fish – though I’ve no idea how they came to be in the pond (maybe they’re flying fish!) Perhaps, like many plant varieties, Koi carp don’t breed true from seed.
I won’t be putting them back in the main pond when it’s ready because, as I’ve said already, it’s going to be a wildlife pond, and the fish will eat the wildlife. I’ll either have to make a separate pond for them somewhere, or find another home for them. Fish and chips, anyone? (only joking).
I’ve started taking apart the waterfall behind the pond…
While the fibreglass waterfall sections looked quite realistic – almost like real stone – they’re not really my style. I’m intending to level ‘the hill’ and plant some dogwoods (Cornus) species in it’s place, to make a backdrop to the pond. With their coloured stems they should look very impressive in the winter. So far, I’ve got one Cornus alba ‘sibirica variegata’ which is a cutting from a cutting, from a cutting, which has bright red stems in winter; and one Cornus sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’, which came as part of an order from the excellent Burncoose nurseries earlier this year. I put it into a larger pot to grow it on ready for planting out (hopefully) this autumn. I’ve not grown Midwinter Fire before, but even in a pot, sat on earth in the middle of a garden construction site, it looks wonderful…
Actually, the photograph doesn’t do it justice. The gradient from orange through to red makes it glow as if it’s on fire. This effect can be achieved with other shrubs… but only by setting them on fire!
I found the remains of the wasp nest under the waterfall; beginning to decay, with just a few, sleepy wasps left alive…
I’ve levelled the area to the right of the pond, between the pond and the wooden workshop building, and begun to plant it up. The main feature is an Acer griseum (Paperbark maple), a seedling from the garden of one of my customers. This is a small tree, often grown multi-stemmed, and renowned for its bronze-coloured peeling bark. In the autumn the leaves turn all sorts of shades of red, orange and yellow – quite spectacular. To the right of it is another shrub from the Burncoose order; Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’; also potted on to build it up ready for planting. It’s filled with beautiful white flower clusters in mid-summer, which fade gracefully to the dried, brown heads that will stay on the plant all winter (they’re great for cut flower displays).
You can see the path that will meander around the back of the pond, made from re-claimed materials – edged with bricks on end, and filled with compacted rubble. A layer of slate chippings will finish it off (if it doesn’t finish me off first!)
So, as you can see, I’ve been busy. But there’s a lot to do yet. I’m continuing to dig out the honey fungus rhizomorphs that have spread throughout the garden. Opportunities to work in the garden are reducing as there are less and less daylight hours, and it gets colder and wetter. A few trees and shrubs are still holding on to their leaves – one of our pear trees, for instance – but most are now bare. I always find this a difficult time, and this year it seems worse than before. But even now there are signs of better times. Spring-flowering bulbs are just beginning to poke their snouts out of the soil, and I’ve noticed that the roses I planted just a few weeks ago are coming into bud. Buds are swelling on many of the trees, too – fat, juicy flower buds in the case of the magnolia, and rhododendrons in particular. It’ll soon be spring. We just need to get through what the poet Ian Mcmillan refers to as ‘the long dark corridor of winter’…
It was almost as though Christmas had come early. Last week a parcel was delivered, containing bare root rose plants.
How they were packaged – in a big, friendly, paper bag
Roses are an ideal species to plant bare-rooted in the dormant season (from now until March, but the earlier the better). They’re cheaper to buy, so you get more rose for your money. It allows them to get their roots down into the soil so they’re ready to get going come the spring, and they should need less watering than potted specimens planted in the growing season.
The plants are from David Austin, who are renowned for their ‘English’ roses – a style of rose developed by David Austin in the old rose style, with lots of blooms and good fragrance.
Inside, the roses were in a biodegradable plastic bag
Sadly David Austin senior passed away last year, but the company continues to operate from their home in Albrighton, Shropshire (8 miles NW of Wolverhampton). Under normal conditions (should that be in quotation marks?) you can visit and walk around their rose gardens, but they haven’t been open this year. So instead of going along to see the different varieties growing in a garden, I had to make do with immersing myself in the intoxicating flower porn that is the David Austin catalogue.
My roses don’t look much at the moment – just a bunch of green sticks with a few roots attached – but by mid-summer next year they should hopefully be looking good. There are five plants there: – Dame Judi Dench – an apricot-orange shrub rose – Gertrude Jekyll – one of their best known; a strong pink rose, available as either a shrub or a climber (I went for the shrub) – Tuscany superb – a gallica type shrub rose, deep maroon, with orange stamens. It flowers only once each season – Munstead Wood – another very deep, rich purple shrub rose – Claire Austin – a white climber that will grow in shade, named for one of David Austin’s children (who, incidentally, now runs her own mail-order perennial nursery) All of the varieties have good scent, which was a major consideration, as there are few things more disappointing than a rose that doesn’t smell.
It’s recommended to soak the plants in water for at least two hours before you plant them
The website said delivery would normally be in November, and suggested it might be late this year due to the dreaded you-know-what. In fact they arrived early in the last week of October, which caught me out somewhat, as I hadn’t finished preparing the ground. I managed to get all four of the shrub roses in, but Claire Austin had to be healed in for now, while I get her position ready.
I’ve always thought how lovely it must be to have a rose named after you, but as I planted Judy Dench it occurred to me that having your namesake put in the ground again and again might be seen as unfortunately portentous, particularly as you approach the final years of your life. Sorry Judy!
So with the new roses in the ground, it’s just a case of waiting patiently for next summer. I can’t wait to be walking around the garden stuffing my nose into the silky petals of rose after rose, and creating lots of lovely rose porn to share with you all via the pulling weeds blog…
Anyone who’s ever eaten outside in the summer will know that wasps can be a problem. The wasps we see most are the social wasps (Vespula species); the ones that make large nests, generally where you don’t want them. A few years a ago I had a nest in my compost heap. I didn’t empty out the compost until they’d gone, and it was only then I discovered they’d excavated a hole the size of a bucket. Sometimes when I went to the compost bin a wasp would fly out of the nest entrance straight into my forehead, bounce off and then carry on around me, but they never really bothered me. But if they identify you as a threat, then you’re in trouble!
Comings and goings at the nest entrance
There’s currently a nest in ‘the hill’ – the mound of earth and rocks behind the pond. The hill is due to be removed, as it doesn’t feature on my garden design (a free-draining rockery with alpine plants doesn’t sit well by a pond), but I’ll probably not get around to that until after the nest has been vacated, so the intention is to live and let live. I’ve only been stung once so far. Apart from trying to help themselves to our lunch, they haven’t been too much trouble. But I’ve been removing a large and decrepit patio, and one day the vibrations from my pick axe must have disturbed them, because the next moment I’d dropped the pick axe and was running back to the house, waving my arms about like an idiot.
My RHS Pests and Diseases book tells me wasps can be a significant pest because they eat fruit – apples, pears, plums and berries. It doesn’t mention that they also eat rose buds. I first noticed this while volunteering at Dyffryn gardens in the Vale of Glamorgan. In my garden there are currently only two roses. The red climbing rose by the chicken run has escaped unscathed, but the yellow rose, which is currently by the compost heap (but due to be moved soon) is closer to the nest. In June and July the blooms were fine. But then the wasps started to munch on the buds. Ever since, very few buds have made it to be flowers, and those that have are raggedy.
One of the roses that made it – not much to look at.
The book also says that wasps are important predators of garden pests (illustrated by a nice picture of a wasp carrying off a vine weevil). Which is fine as far as it goes, but I know wasps don’t just kill pests, but beneficial insects such as pollinators too. In fact, they’re the only insect I’ve seen killing for reasons other than to eat. I once had an old ivy tree that was a magnet for insects when in flower. One year the whole of the crown was alive with flying insects. On closer inspection I saw a scene of carnage, because the wasps, rather than share the feast with bees and hoverflies of all kinds, had decided to see off the competition. It was a mini massacre. Each wasp would grab its victim – be it hoverfly, honey bee, bumble bee, etc. and sting it repeatedly. Killer and victim, neither able to fly while in the deadly embrace, would fall to ground together. After a short moment the wasp would rise up to look for it’s next target, leaving the unfortunate victim in it’s death throes. The ground became thick with dead pollinators.
I have to admit to a grudging respect for wasps – in a world where the fittest survive, they are far and away the fittest. Solitary wasps, many of which are plain black rather than with the danger-warning yellow stripes, are just as tough. In my last garden I would regularly see them fly down, grab a woodlouse spider (which is a fearsome looking beast and, apparently, one of the few British spiders with fangs that can pierce human skin), casually sting it to death and then carry it off to its lair. Parasitic wasps lay their eggs inside the bodies of other organisms (such as caterpillars). When the eggs hatch out they feed on the poor creature’s insides; literally eating it alive. Everything’s got to live somehow, I know, but to me, that’s just plain wrong!
Wasp nests tend to finish in the autumn – having sent out new queens to find places to hibernate, the rest of the wasps die. I’m hoping that will happen soon with our nest, so I can get on with the work around the pond.
A few weeks ago I visited Rosemoor, in Devon for the first time. I was expecting a lot – as one of the four RHS gardens you would expect it to be good – and I wasn’t disappointed.
The huge flowers of Allium Globemaster in the foreground, with roses, lupins, geraniums and phlomis in the dappled shade of a cluster of Himalayan Birch trees
The weather was cool, but there was plenty of sunshine, so it was quite a good temperature for walking around a garden. Roses play a big part in the gardens (the clue’s in the name) and late June was a great time to visit.
One of the two formally laid out rose gardens; this is the Queen Mother’s Rose Garden.Rosa ‘Malcolm Sargent’A honey bee helping itself to the nectar of a Gallica shrub rose ‘Tuscany Superba’, which is an unusual, rich purple.Rosa ‘Pax’Pillars, obelisks and swags dripping with roses and clematis – the Rose Trail
Rosemoor is a large garden. There are formal areas, such as the rose gardens, hot, and cold gardens, a fruit and veg garden, and the long border; and there are informal areas, including two woodland walks. The gardens are dissected by a main road, with an underpass joining the two areas. There was some traffic noise, but it wasn’t too invasive. The café provides some good nosebag and an acceptable coffee, which was good, as we were there for a large part of the day.
The Hot Garden, quite green as yet, with reds and yellows just beginning to show. I love the two upright purple beech trees (Fagus sylvatica ‘Dawyck Purple’) standing sentinel either side of the rear entranceA beautiful specimen of Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Diablo d’Or’ in the hot garden.Cornus koussa var. chinensis ‘Wisley Queen’ – spectacular in full flower (well, technically I suppose you should say in full bract, as the flowers are the tiny clusters at the centre of the white bracts)The borders were looking goodThe Cottage Garden
Perhaps influenced by the garden at Great Dixter, a lot of the open areas of grass at Rosemoor have been turned over to wildflower meadow. It’s much softer, more romantic, than formal mown grass, and of course it’s great for wildlife such as pollinating insects.
Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus minor) parasitizes grass, reducing its vigour; so allowing the broad-leaved wildflower plants room to thrive. Podophyllum ‘Kaleidoscope’ – one of many more unusual plants on in the gardens. A good talking point to grow in moist soil and dappled shade
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In the end I was defeated by fatigue – mental, as much as physical. Like a child in a toy shop the excitement was just too much, and the coffee was only going to keep me going for so long. It would be great to have the luxury of being able to make regular shorter visits, but alas, Rosemoor is just too far away to justify that. Still, I hope it isn’t too long before I can go back again.
