My roses

I have waited a long time for my roses this year, a very long time, but finally I have roses in my garden! The first flush of flowers is always the best with the most flowers, but all my rosebushes are repeat flowering and will go on producing roses until February next year when I cut them down. Normally it takes around 8-10 weeks from cutting the bushes down in first week of February until the very first flowers appear, and the first big flush usually comes sometime in May. But this year nothing is as usual in my garden and everything is late, many things very late. All the more welcome though, now that the roses finally are here :-)

My garden is still more green than anything else from a distance, you have to go up-close to see the colours dotted here and there - well, with the exception of the masses of red roses on the right side fence of course! At this time of year the garden is closing in and taking on a jungle like feel, you can no longer see the path from one end to the other as the plants are obscuring the view, give it another month and it will really feel like walking inside an overgrown greenhouse. This time of year you can really see how many plants I actually have managed to squeeze into my tiny garden, as most of them are out of the ground – although some of the spring flowering plants have already died down and the space is now taken over by plants in pots.

Here is my rose bed, there are 5 roses here tightly packed together. Last year there were 8 here but I have thrown away an old one and taken out 2 which now are growing in containers instead – making more space for them all.

The red rose is 'Crimson cascade' and this is one of my favourite plants in the garden. It is a climber and I have trained it to the fence.

'Crimson cascade'.

Next to 'Crimson cascade' is 'Freedom', a lovely yellow rose I got 9 years ago at Hampton Court Flower Show.

'Freedom'.

This little trooper is my £1 pot rose from Tesco, I bought it many years ago, can’t really remember when but I think it was in 2002. It flowers prolifically until cut down. No need to throw away your indoor pot roses when they are finished flowering, just put them in the garden and treat them like the rest of your roses!

This is one of my 3 David Austin roses, 'Susan Williams-Ellis', a lovely pure white rose with scent.

The last rose in this bed is 'Mildred Scheel', a smallish bush with huge flowers.

Down at the bottom of my garden is my second David Austin rose, 'Wildeve', with beautiful quartered flowers and a faint scent. It is still quite spindly and small and needs support on each branch, I hope it will be a big and strong bush in years to come.

'Wildeve'

Up on my patio I have the remaining 4 roses in containers, although one of them has no flowers at the moment. This is another pot rose bought in a supermarket many years ago.

And this is 'Rob Roy', rescued from in between Crimson cascade and Freedom in the main rose bed where it didn’t get enough sun and didn’t flower much. Here in the container it gets full sun and seems to do much better.

'Rob Roy'

The last container is at my seating area, because it is my absolute favourite rose, David Austin rose 'Scepter'd Isle', with a fantastic scent and lovely cupped flowers.

'Scepter'd Isle'.

'Scepter'd Isle'.

I am reorganising the flower bed on the left side sometime this summer or autumn, several plants are going out, leaving room for some new. There might be a new rose there this time next year, I have several on my wish list, only problem is that it is quite a shady bed so roses are not really the right plants to put in there. But there are roses for semi-shady spots too so I am sure I will find some suitable. I have a list of roses I would love to have and David Austin’s ‘Darcey Bussell’ is on the top. According to them it can tolerate quite a lot of shade so perhaps this time next year I will have ‘Darcey Bussell’ in flower in my garden.

My oriental lilies have just opened their first flowers, one of my dahlias opened its first flower today, and 3 of my 4 hydrangeas are very close to full flowers. I can see I need to write a new post soon, but I am going into hospital yet again, on Monday morning for a small procedure so I guess it will have to wait until I am home again. It is always a bit nerve-wracking going into hospital at this time of year, especially since we have quite nice warm weather right now, I always wonder about my garden when I am away and if it has enough water. I will give the whole garden a good soak Sunday evening and hope it will last until I come home and can water again on Thursday. By then I guess I will have lots of lilies and dahlias in flower! Until next time, take care.