Gardening with Gael - A rose by any other name…

 

This week it was as a very happy gardener that I headed off to the market. This is rose time of the year and usually I pick one rose to write about and then I whinge and complain about the effect of possums on the roses I try to grow. This week I was off to see Ces knowing I could impulse buy a rose knowing it would survive.

It is apparent from the state of my roses that Barney the dog is at last doing his job. I am not sure if he actually kills the possums but he certainly deters them. I have even planted a cou-

ple of roses without the surrounding gorse to see what happens. Nothing. They grow and flower and look beautiful. Even Box is enjoying them.

There are vases of roses in every room of the house at the Block. It is too good to be true. In the flush of joy I have fed them more than ever before. As a result I am going to dedicate this article to the seven roses that have struggled on in spite of possums, drought and general ne-glect. I do not spray my roses. I prune them back quite hard in the winter and feed them.

Graham Thomas:

This is one of the David Austin roses. My Gra-ham Thomas roses have been very successful

even in the sand. They perhaps have not grown as tall as they might in ideal situations because in some books they are have been identified as climbers. It is also described as one of the most popular roses in the world. It was the first yellow rose to resemble the form of hardy old garden roses. Medium cup shaped blooms of a rich pure yellow are repeated throughout the season.

Absolutely Fabulous: Another pure buttery yel-low rose which is disease resistant and robust. Not in fact named for the TV show, this rose has won many awards. This rose is reasonably similar in appearance to Graham Thomas .

Abraham Darby: To me this is the apricot version of Graham Tho-mas. It also grows tall and can be trained as a climber. The flowers are slightly larger and it too is a David Austin rose.

Gertrude Jekyll: An-other Austin rose, this one named after the famed English garden designer and writer. I originally bought it because I had a grand-mother called Ger-trude and I have never been disappointed with it. Year after year it is covered in large full petalled flowers of a glowing deep rich pink. To me there is a touch of mauve in the colour. I have moved it many times but every year it is covered in blooms which carry on through sum-mer and autumn.

St Cecelia: I bought this Austin rose from Vicky Cox (of the Herit-age Rose Society) at the market a few years ago. The possums loved it. I was lucky to get half a dozen blooms a year.

This year it is magnifi-cent. I love the soft pink colour, described in some books as a buff apricot and strong fra-grance. It looks amaz-ing with other roses in a vase, the deeply cupped cabbage-like blooms have completely covered the bush this year.

Wildcat: I have writ-ten about wildcat before. I have four bush roses of it and three standards. It is constantly covered in bright yellow and or-ange blooms borne in

clusters. Disease resist-ant and easy to grow last year they bloomed from spring till autumn. I am not sure why but the possums left these roses alone.

Sir Edmund Hilary: “I need a white climb-ing rose,” said my friend Jan. “This is the one,” I said, taking her to see this stunning speci-mum. Glossy foliage and creamy white full-petalled blooms that are continuous throughout the season cover this vig-orous climber.

I have many more but these are the ones that stand out for me for their strong growth, scents and continuous flowering.