Wordless Wednesday - A whole lot of Rosy.

A rosy glow.

My world smells lovely at the moment.

Can you ever have too many roses?  I suppose the answer to that question depends on how much you can stomach squishing greenfly between your thumb and forefinger, as that seems to be a fairly incessant task at present.

Have been cutting my Constance Spry, Gertrude Jekylls, New Dawn and Falstaff to make some lovely scented bunches for my market stall, and have even braved the thorny stems of the picture perfect noisette, Felicite Parmentier - so blush pink and lovely despite the spikes.

New Dawn and Contance Spry - soft, pink and lovely.

Finding the perfect cups to match them is always fun - I don't especially like Royal Albert's 'Old Rose' pattern, but you would think it had been designed specially to host Falstaff and Absolutely Fabulous, my yellow stalwart.

Dark Falstaff roses with the yellow floribunda Absolutely Fabulous

On the back of all this romantic rosiness, I even braved a trip to the rather gorgeous local wedding shop last week to offer them a weekly bunch in exchange for displaying my card.  The flowers do look like they have found their rightful home amidst all the wedding gowns, so am hoping (and feeling scared) about getting some enquiries via that route. Mind you, I can remember feeling the same about market stalls earlier in the year and now take these in my stride.

I'm spoilt for choice in the garden at the moment for scent, colour and form. Even picked my first dahlia last week, so am hoping that they will all start swinging into action over the next few weeks. 

Must get down to the allotment today to tie in all my sweet peas and to check on the progress of the soft fruit. Am pretty sure the gooseberries will be ready for picking, and with any luck the fat pigeons will not have torpedoed the netting on my cherry tree.  Last time I checked, it looks like being my best ever cherry crop (the tree is now about 5 years old), so am very excited as they are one of my favourite summer eats.  The redcurrants in my gardens are also starting to blush and I'm hoping that the ones on the plot are slightly further on as they get a bit more sun in that location.  I sense a jam making extravaganza in the next few weeks so will have to start burning the midnight oil to process all my garden bounty at this rate!

The kindest cut

Inspired by getting my own straggly locks chopped off this morning, wielding my sharp secateurs and a disinfectant rag, I ventured into the thorny midsts of my roses today and took out all the lanky, dead and twiggy bits:  I want them to work hard for me in the cutting garden come early summer.

Most of my choices in the garden were made for glorious scent - the thing that turned me on to roses about 15 years ago. I was visiting a friend who suddenly exclaimed "Sniff that".  No, it wasn't anything more intoxicating than a beautiful white rose - and that was the start of my perfumed rose addiction.

I started off with 'Gertrude Jekyll'  (even though I thought I was buying Constance Spry).

Rosa 'Gertrude Jekyll'

She's beautifully perfumed and flowers well but does get a bit leggy and straggly so I had to reduce her height by about a third this afternoon. Sorry Gertrude, but you'll thank me for it later, I hope.  Growing at the back of the border, climbing up an obelisk,  the lower growing peonies and hardy geraniums hide her naked legs, and it's good to have her pink blossoms giving height to the overall scheme.

A later purchase delivered a  'Constance Spry' to keep Gertrude company in the same stretch of border. I cut this one back quite a lot last year without any loss of flower power, and as a result have slightly less work to do on the pruning front this year.

Rosa 'Constance Spry"

I'm always slightly tentative about cutting back Old English type David Austin roses as I don't want them to lose their relaxed, arching habit.  This same habit, however, does mean that for arranging they are best cut on a shorter stems as they tend to droop with their thinner stems and large, heavy flowers.  Or you can support them in denser arrangements with your filler flowers as below:

Here, they're arranged with my yellow floribunda rose 'Absolutely Fabulous' which lived up to its name from June to November with amazing repeat flowering despite the pouring rain. The deep pink rose pictured is a small shrub 'John Betjeman' which has fantastic colour but, like Ab Fab, little scent.  The jury is still out on this one as his stems are rather weak and spindly - the glorious colour, however, buys him another year of grace to see if he can merit his space with sturdier stalks after a prune.

My other loves are the petite Felicite Parmentier;  the most perfect shell pink cluster flowered rose with amazing scent, and Falstaff; another leggy scrambler of the deepest magenta hue and nostril-thrilling whiffage.

Felicite Parmentier

Falstaff and foxgloves

The harshest cut was today reserved for my newly planted hybrid teas.  I've cut the ones which weren't already shortened by the nursery to about half their previous size - want them to grow into nice sturdy plants with strong flower-bearing stems.  My new additions are Black Baccara and Peace roses - the former seems to be reliably dark and dusky. The latter, however, in the images I've seen, seems to vary wildly between pastel hued lemon/cream delicately fading to pink edges,  and horribly canary combined with  lipstick pink - so I'm waiting with bated breath to see how that one pans out.  Will keep you posted!

Can't wait for them all to put on a show for me come June and to breath those smells again.  (But before that will come their manure top dressing in spring - not quite so pretty...).

So what are you waiting for?  You can't do a lot else at this time of year.  Take up your secateurs, sturdy gloves and your tweezers for spike removal surgery afterwards.  Some time between now and the end of February, nip out between the showers and give your roses a prune.

For advice on rose pruning, check out the Royal Horticultural Society website

Revamping the border

Time to get to work on the newly emptied border.

October is a great time to think about what works and what doesn't, and what you want to achieve next year.  Getting in there with a spade and the contents of a compost bin will help your soil get a boost for next year, and will give the inevitable frosts time to break up any heavy soil over the winter.

I'm going to set to work in a moment to dig out more ground elder and other weeds and really get my 'new' thorn free border ready for planting.  I've been looking at smaller, repeat flowering roses to put into it on t'internet and have earmarked a few possibilities on www.cants roses.co.uk - 'Susan', a white rose which is reputed to repeat well and have a really good vase life and also the beautiful pink Queen of Sweden rose.

The only thing to remember with roses is not to plant them in soil which has previously been home to roses or they will not thrive due to 'rose replant' problems, so will have to put them in a slightly different patch.

Am very excited about my new area though, so better get to it while the rain holds off.

School term starts and my new gardening  regime begins....

The plan -

• Finish off hard landscaping.
• Pick up cheap annual seeds from garden centre to start September sowing
• Cut back lavender to old wood and save dried flower heads
• Take cuttings of new penstemons to have some more for next year
• Clear out the green house
• Wage war on ground elder
• Have a general tidy up around the garden - get rid of all the stagnant buckets of rain-stewed weeds which have been sitting around for ages....
• Take all the remaining patio rubble to the recycling centre
• Do my first fencing project - replace the section of front fence between us and the neighbours.
• Meet with school to discuss their gardens and a work schedule...  (Yippeee - I've got the infant school garden back!)
• Make regular weekly visits to the allotment.

That should be enough for starters.... (that's without all the house painting jobs which are also on the list).

Summer seems to have arrived in September this year, with a whole week of sunny weather forecast for the Midlands at last.  It's come a bit late for my garden, but at least the roses in the main flower bed are putting on a good second flush of flowers.  The yellow rose, 'Absolutely Fabulous' is living up to its name as has been covered in new blooms and they just seem to keep going and going.  My beloved dark red/purple 'Falstaff' has also been having its best year yet, but it's always a race to get its blooms to open fully before the rain clobbers them and turns them into brown dough balls.  The current flower heads seem to be winning the race so am hoping to have a splendiferous show by the weekend.

I'm also delighted to see the herbaceous clematis (c. heracleifolia 'Wyevale') doing so well - it seems to be sprouting new bits every year and as it is the nearest scent to that of Indonesian frangipani blossom (my all time favourite flower smell), I am always happy to see it spread a bit further.  Combines well with the yellow rose (below) at this time of year, don't you think?

Hacked at the hawthorn hedge which is trying to turn into a collection of 20ft hawthorn trees earlier this week - layered a few bits by lacerating my arms and bending springy branches down and threading them into the framework of the hedge, but the really tall escapees just had to be cut down.  Now comes the fun bit of disposing of the malevolent prunings.

Right - back to work IN THE SUNSHINE!

Today's weather will be.....

Picture perfect roses

Rosa 'New Dawn' - soft shell pink, blowsy and so.. well.. rosy...

Mixed bunches - includes Rose de Rescht (dark pink, front small bunch), Ferdinand Pichard (stripy), Zepherine Drouhin (dark pink in taller bunch).  The perfect tiny shell pink one in the small bunches is Felicite Parmentier - has loads and loads of flowers on it at the moment.  They all smell gorgeous too.  How can anyone resist?

Where is the summer?

June monsoons and now July pours down.  When will the sun ever come out for more than a couple of hours?

I may not have to worry about drought and a lack of water for plants while I am away from the garden, but I am plagued with slugs and snails who are delighting in the warm, swampy conditions.

Was hoping to use my day off today to go to the allotment and hack at the weeds but it is far too wet to go near the soil.  Am hoping that Sunday will give me chance to wage war on the encroaching forest of creeping buttercup and sprawling grass....

At least things are still flowering and water butts are full but redundant.

Alec's Red - smells like Turkish delight and has converted me to hybrid tea roses (well some of them anyway)

The first ever delphinium in my gardening career to survive slug onslaughts

Rosa 'Pleine de Grace' - hideously spiky and savage, but then it does this and all is forgiven for a short while.

Plants - say cheese

Always a good idea to take lots of photos of the garden as it changes throughout the seasons to record successes, failures and things to shift next year.

Photo records help to keep my critical tendencies in check -  when I prowl around the garden, I'm thinking of what needs doing, what needs weeding or pruning and where colour needs injecting etc.  What I sometimes forget is to look at the garden with a more general eye and celebrate its success.  Last week I was feeling a bit grumpy thinking of all the bits which need pepping up but have just had a browse through the photo album and think I am being a bit unreasonable (who me?).  It is actually not bad at the moment and I should step back a bit more and enjoy its success.

Part of me is still fretting that it will peter out next month though!!  But I guess it is the critical bit that keeps it developing and moving forwards.  Wouldn't do for things to stay the same indefinitely after all - far too boring.

Coming up roses...

Lovely scents in the garden at the moment - sweet peas are starting and the roses are coming into flower.  Can't resist cutting them for the house and love them mixed in with the frothy lime green of alchemilla mollis.

 It's also the only time of year when I have even a small corner in my heart for ground elder.... If it wasn't such a thug, it would actually be quite a good plant as it has lovely bright foliage and stems and gorgeous airy white flowers.  The fact that I have hack them off before it can spread seed anywhere else means that I have lots to stuff into my flower arrangements - it is very pretty though. Pity I hate it for its invasiveness...

A mixed bunch of roses, knautia, alchemilla mollis, ground elder and pink and white snapdragons.  A few sprigs of pittosporum are great with their variegated leaves and dark stems for contrast.

Wish I could add smellivision too.... Gorgeously scented.

Growing ever upwards

The foxgloves and dog daisies have finally arrived, adding height to the border and creating the messy undulating look which I (luckily) love - I'm too disorganised to have beautifully graduated borders - and anyhow, I prefer my patch to look unrestrained.  Can't wait for my verbena bonariensis seedlings to get established, for that very reason.

Here are some photo updates:

This thyme was one of many in a pot from Sainsbury's  - I've had loads off it for cooking and it obviously likes being chopped.

Coming along nicely.....

Love peonies - even when they're knackered by rain so quickly.

Aquilegia fireworks in the border!

Angelica - statuesque and smells of gin. Remind you of anyone?

Thought all the foxgloves would have reverted to pink this year, but some white ones can still be found.  

Waiting for me have time to plant them.....

Spring is on the way

Sweet Peas toughening up in the unheated greenhouse.

Signs of stirring everywhere - allium bulbs now poking up through the borders and I'm always amazed at the rate at which they grow away each day.  Globe artichokes are sprouting nicely so I separated some offshoots from an established plant today to try and increase stocks.  Potted them up using fairly gritty compost with added perlite for drainage, so hope that will be enough to avoid any rotting problems.

The staging in the greenhouse is filling up nicely and is host to early sowings of sweet peas, lupins which have been booted off the top of the piano indoors, window boxes of lettuce sowings...

As well as the artichoke offshoots, today's additions were a couple of lengths of guttering into which I sowed some peas - either to go into the allotment or to eat as pea shoots in salads.   Also lifted and divided heucheras which where starting to get a bit straggly, along with eryngiums (sea holly) which I'm hoping to use to pad out the new patio border.  The satisfaction of getting plants for free definitely rivals the pleasures of plant shopping at shows.

Got a flyer through the post about the Malvern Spring Show today - debating whether to risk my wallet or not this year...

Death to ground elder!

Astrantia (pink) and Lysimachia (purple leaf)

Hardy Geranium with euphorbia
(green foliage and bracts)

Spent my afternoon doing battle with the creeping roots of ground elder - I can tell I've been too busy to garden properly over the past 18 months as the evil weed is now firmly re-established in one of the borders.

One happy side effect of ferreting out the insidious roots is that it has encouraged me to review which plants merit a place in the affected border and which ones are just too woody, straggly and generally over the hill. No mercy has been shown to anything falling into the latter category - green recycling bags now await collection stuffed with scruffy purple sage (have another clump which I'll take cuttings from later to replenish my stocks), invasive lumps of lysimachia (which has great purple foliage, but is a real thug) and endless seedlings of hardy geranium which are making a bid for world domination.

Also lifted and divided clumps of herbaceous perennials like astrantia, anemone levellei, primroses and aquilegias, so hopefully the denuded border should fill up again over the coming months and show a bit more vigour.  That's the theory anyhow - hope we don't get a prolonged cold snap or another dry spring like last year...

Shifted some of the hellebore seedlings which were clustered at the feet of the parent plant - Old Mother hellebore is just coming into flower, so I know that the growing season is imminent.  Lungworts are also starting to add a welcome splash of blue and pink in addition to the snowdrops which are putting on a great display this year.

It feels good to be doing some proper gardening again - it's definitely addictive, and I get very grumpy if I can't get out there and do something.