Winning roses

Find out how the famous blooms at Flemington always look spectacular, and create the same magic at your place

See how the blooms at Flemington always look so incredible

forget fashions on the field this carnival season and check out the spectacular racecourse roses instead!

Flemington is famous for the Melbourne Cup, the race that stops the nation, but the roses on the course are also renowned for their amazing colour. Head gardener Terry Freeman has worked at Flemington Racecourse for more than 40 years and is known as the ‘keeper of the roses’.

In the months leading up to the spring carnival Terry and his team of 18 horticulturists and gardeners are kept busy pruning and feeding more than 16,000 plants so they are in full, beautiful bloom on the big day – the perfect backdrop to all the hats, horses and hoopla.

EXPERT TIPS

Here is what to know to grow beautiful roses at your place.

• The soil used for the Flemington

roses is brought in from a local garden supplier, not the stables! It’s a mix of sandy soil, composted manure and organic matter.

• The plants are fed three times

a year with an organic slowrelease fertiliser – in September, late November and late January. Additional foliar feeding with a fish-based liquid fertiliser is done weekly once they go into bud.

• All winter pruning

is done by hand, and that’s why the pruning schedule starts at the end of May. The first roses to be trimmed are those that take a long time to flower – ‘the slow coaches’ Terry calls them. And, the last are called ‘the sprinters’. At your place, midwinter is the time to prune, which is July in most districts.