Roses, roses and more roses

Can you have too many roses? Silly question really, of course you can’t!

I have managed to squeeze in 31 roses in my tiny garden, among a whole lot of other plants – and I think I can manage to fit in a few more roses if I look carefully. There are tall climbing roses and tiny miniature roses and everything between. I will show you a few today, but all 31 are flowering beautifully right now.

I have finally managed to sort out my seating area, the parasol is in place and a new table and cushions. The parasol is desperately needed as there is no shade in this garden except for a tiny area under the apple tree.

But back to the roses, here with some Alstroemeria 'Dandy Candy'.

This is the main rose bed, but there are more roses in the front garden and two next to the Woodland Bed.

The whole bed is framed by miniature roses in containers, just cheap pot roses I have bought from Asda (Walmart).

This is ‘Constance Spry’ and ‘The Generous Gardener’ and eventually they will fill the whole wall if I let them!

Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ starts out as this intense dark pink and fades into a light pink, especially in hot weather and when fully open.

‘Chandos Beauty’ is possibly the rose with the most exquisite scent of all my roses, but ‘The Generous Gardener’ has a powerful, lemony, really lovely scent too.

The new table in my garden was a necessity to accommodate my huge parasol – this is the parasol I had from my previous house and it fits right in here, perfect size and because it is square it fits along the wall and covers my furniture if we get a shower. Not that we have had much of that, I wish we could get 3 weeks of rain, that would be great for the garden. Just wait until the roses are finished flowering!

The old garden table has been recycled and is now a nice seat under the apple tree for a quiet moment in the shade.

And just behind are my strawberry beds – now with custom made, squirrel proof canopies. I bought aluminium canopy frames made for the raised beds, the idea was that you just throw netting over them to protect your crop. That would not have worked against the local squirrel population so I used chicken wire to cover the frames from one end, over the top and down to the other end. The real head ache was what to do at each end – and how to get to the strawberries to pick them.

I made a door at each end out of bamboo, steel wire and water proof tape and attached chicken wire to this too. The door can either be removed completely or just opened on either side.

The door is fastened with a simple steel wire that just bends up to open. The chicken wire is attached to the bamboo and aluminium frame with small size cable ties. Thank goodness for zip ties, I use them everywhere in the garden!

The cages have proved very successful, I haven’t lost a single strawberry and I have already eaten many. This is the way to eat strawberries, from the field to the mouth in seconds! And as for my worry last month about pollinators being able to get through the chicken wire? I needed have worried, they seem to manage that just fine, whoever they are, doing the job for me. The new strawberry flowers are obviously taken care of and have produced berries since the cages were made :-)

By the way, as we are talking of strawberries, have you seen PINK strawberry flowers before?? I had not, so when I saw these online I just had to buy some plants. They are so pretty, I hope the strawberries turn out to be just as nice. This is ‘Toscana’ and I am quite sure I have eaten Toscana strawberries before, bought in shops, I think they are quite commonly used in Norway.

The rest of my vegetable garden is a mixed success, the 3 window boxes to the left were sowed with mini carrots and spring onions, but the squirrels kept messing about here and many of the tiny seedlings died or were eaten. I might just give up this project. On the right side are seedlings waiting to be planted in the window boxes in my front garden, once the winter pansies give up their extraordinary flowering – they just go on and on so I don’t have the heart to throw them out just yet.

My cherry tomato plant is growing like mad, not long before the first tomatoes are here. Just below, in the bottom right corner are my first radishes, I have eaten many already. And the chillies to the left are growing well too and have started to flower.

The Japanese garden is lush and mainly green, just waiting for the lilies to start flowering.

The foxgloves are still flowering, these photos were taken a week ago and I have now taken off the tallest spikes to let smaller, new spikes emerge.

This is a lovely campanula, I have had them in way too small pots for a couple of years – now finally in the ground in two different places they really have taken off.

Some of the many alliums in my garden.

I finally took the plunge last year and bought an abutilon. I looked for a long time as I wanted a dark red one and this one was named ‘Red’. Sadly it turned out to be more orange than red so I am not sure if it is a keeper, but it seems happy here and didn’t mind the cold winter at all despite not being hardy. I have taken the liberty of re-naming it ‘Orange-Red’ as it is a bit more fitting!

My wisteria from last autumn is doing well, deciding how to train it is a bit of a head ache as I have only seen the finished article and don’t really know what to do to get there. Eventually the wisteria should have a large umbrella shaped canopy with bare stems halfway up so that’s what I am aiming for. Might take some trial and error. It is growing like mad so if I get it wrong I can always cut it down and start again. Once it has reached the top and spread out as far as I want it, it is just a matter of pruning to shape. Often. Very often. But I am prepared for that. This American wisteria flowers on new wood and is therefore happy to be pruned several times a year and will still re-bloom, the Chinese or Japanese wisteria which flowers on old wood can’t be pruned like this and often take many years before the first flower appears.

My calla lilies have started to flower again, last year I had flowers into October so if we get a good year again I have 5 months of flowers to look forward to.

This is Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’, isn’t it lovely? I know it’s just a thistle, but even so....

This is my inherited clematis, growing behind the hibiscus in way too much shade – but it seems happy enough. Would have loved to know which one it is.

My two container grown clematis’ on the arch are doing so well that next winter I will plant them in the ground here where they are growing. I put them in containers in case I had to move them as this space gets quite a lot of shade from the house.

They are both outgrowing the big containers by now and I think both will appreciate to have their feet in the soil by next spring.

One last rose picture, this is ‘Abigail’, a miniature that has grown quite large this year, about 70cm tall, I hope she doesn’t grow any taller because then she will have to find a new home elsewhere in the garden. But an absolutely stunning rose she is.

The garden video this time is filled with roses of course, but I have managed to fit in a few other plants too, I filmed Monday this week when the weather was changing from blazing sun to overcast from one minute to the next making it look like I have filmed over several days. That’s the British weather for you – changing all the time. Put your sound up, increase the screen to full frame and change the quality to HD or as best as your download speed can allow - I promise it will be worth it.

The music was ‘Sometimes when it rains’ with ‘Secret Garden’.
See you next month, when we hopefully have had some rain, take care.