Sunday 12 May 2013

ROSES: I just can't get enough of them

Every now and then I have a strong urge to get into my garden and do something. Gardens are always a work in progress. Lately I am obsessed with roses and trying to make a highly fragrant garden.

There is just one problem though, I have a garden that gets the full sun and literally bakes in the heat. I have planted evergreen shrubs on my fence line, that grow up to 3 meters high. I have deciduous  trees to give a canopy too.
In between this I have some roses, and now suddenly have the urge to go mad planting tall rose bushes and climbers, that will flower for 10 months of the year. Hmmm, now the problem starts.

I had just moved an Apricot Nectar rose, from the yard to make way for a rain water tank to water my garden from. Thus also had to cut down a lemon tree too, also to make way for the tank. Well now the poor rose has died, as it didn't take to it's new home. I have this ugly spot in the garden that looked so beautiful and was very fragrant. It will take a couple  of years to restore the beauty that it once was. But now I am in the mood to plant roses where ever I can see the sun touching the ground. Oh dear, this could be a disaster waiting to happen or a magical transformation.

I have this dream of creating a magical, secret garden that is a delight to the senses. Searching through all my garden magazines and gardening books, looking for that special something. Reality hits me when I look at my garden and realize that it is a big job, and not just that. What things to get rid of and what to keep. The classic gardeners  plight, if I am not mistaking.
I have a few roses in big stone pots to create a fragrant entry to my back yard, the problem is the hot sun is on them  from sun up until 3pm every day. The Australian sun is so powerful it can fry plants in hours, if they do not have cool moist soil for their roots. My pots are sitting on concrete and that is like an oven all day long, my poor roses.

For those wishing to create a garden with long  flowering roses, I would highly recommend the following roses.

For Climbing roses Iceberg, Pierre de Ronsard, Royal Highness, Albertine,
Cecile Brunner, Veilchenblau, and what ever else takes your fancy.

Rose bushes, Iceberg, Apricot nectar, Alex Red, Peter Frankenfeld, Peace
Champagner, Seduction, Diamond Jubilee, Gold Bunny, to name a few.

A good idea for gardeners is to keep all of your plant and tree culture tags in a ring binder folder, with plastic sleeves/pages. Use sticky tape to hold the tags in place. Then you have a good library of all the plants that you have.
 
The top rose is Gold Bunny, which I have in a large pot and the other picture is an Iceberg rose, and a small pink rose called Palace rose. Which I gave to a friend as I was changing my garden, as one does lol.  Gardens are  always being modified one way or an other. Such is the way life is in the world of gardening.