Akaroa
The poet T.S. Eliot called April the cruellest month in The WasteLand. He wasn’t writing about our gardens but of spring in England and how it touched the memory of lost loves
April is the best and worst of times, muses Barbara Lea Taylor
It doesn’t do that for me – I forgot about them long ago – but I agree about it being cruel. April just reminds me of the thumping great messy job ahead – the autumn clean-up. I moan about this every year, but if you are a greedy/lazy gardener like me and you’ve planted too generously and let it all hang out all summer long, now is the time to begin putting it away.
All those annuals and perennials that flaunted themselves all summer must be taken out or cut back. This is not a task I enjoy but a lot can go in the compost bin – if you have one.
I’ve never been very good at composting. My big bin at the back of a shed seemed to be always brimming with green stuff and fresh kitchen throw outs. Until illness kept me away for a couple of months. When I came home and gingerly lifted the lid, the Compost Fairy had visited and there was a bin full of the most beautiful friable compost along with the usual wine corks and potato peelers. So the trick must be to have two bins and rest one every now and then. Duh? (And put more dry stuff in them!)
The nice thing about April is that it’s the best time to take cuttings.
Roses are expensive to buy and not only do cutting-grown roses cost us nothing, they are considered by some growers to be sturdier plants than grafted roses.
Gertrude Jekyll, that great matriarch of 19th-century gardeners, wrote: “They are much longer lived, they give more blooms more continuously, and they throw up no troublesome suckers”.
Perhaps more importantly taking cuttings is a pleasurable thing to do if you don’t take it too seriously.
Choose a branch that has flowered and take your cuttings from a mid-section. They should contain three or more growth nodes and be around 15cm long. The size and shape of the cutting can vary according to the size of the rose but it is important to get at least two growth nodes under the soil when the cutting is planted. Cut on a slant through the bottom node and place in a jar of water promptly. If there’s a willow tree handy you can make willow tea from the chopped-up supple green end shoots and a few leaves, and leave your cuttings in it overnight – or dip them in a rooting hormone.
Plant them close together in a pot of well-soaked river sand or potting mix – I have found a combination of both to be good – with at least two growth nodes under sand or soil. Place under the dripline of an established rose and make sure the pot has good drainage. By spring some should have taken root.
Or you could take cuttings as above then find a place in the vege garden where nothing much happens but they will be watered regularly. Make a shallow trench, place your cuttings in it, cover with soil nearly to the top, tramp down gently, if you have a spare cloche put it over them to protect them – and forget them.
I’ve had successes and failures with both methods. Some roses take root easily – ramblers for instance – others are almost impossible to grow from cuttings. Never blame yourself if all your babies die!
Not all of us are patient enough to wait for cuttings to grow, and I’m often asked by new gardeners to name a fail-safe rose to begin with. If I had a new garden and a reasonable amount of space – or an old garden that needed rejuvenating – I would look at the shrub-climbers. You get a lot for your money, a rose that makes an attractive bushy shrub as well as a climber. Take your pick or have both at once. You can prune it so that it remains a shrub or let it climb.
One of the best shrub-climbers in my garden is ‘Crepuscule’,
which is the French word for twilight and describes the soft apricot colour of the petals, darker at the centre, paling towards the outside. Flowers are borne in clusters with lots of little pointed buds opening to medium-sized flowers. The effect is charming and seems to go on forever. My ‘Crepuscule’ grows beside a kitchen window and I can’t think of a time when it was without flowers and good dark green foliage. My bush doesn’t get much pruning but I have seen this rose used as a splendid hedge and cut down to half its height each winter.
‘Buff Beauty’ belongs to the illustrious Hybrid Musk family of roses bred by the Rev. Pemberton in the 1930s
although it was introduced after his death and we cannot be certain whether it was one of his last seedlings or if the credit should go to one of his gardeners, John and Ann Bentall. It is thought that Ann bred several late Hybrid Musks.
‘Buff Beauty’ is the most beautiful of all – a truly queenly rose. Flowers are large and borne in clusters with layers of petals from apricot to buff yellow, and it repeat flowers through the season. The heady perfume has been described as the essence of all roses. It will grow into a bush almost as wide as it is high and the long branches are easy to train over arches and arbours.
‘Lavender Lassie’ is another shrub climber that seems to flower forever.
Clusters of frilly, fragrant, lavender-pink flowers begin in spring and repeat through summer. It’s a strong plant and covers itself with flowers, which makes it perfect to use as an eye-catching border, but it will also look amazing trained up and over a structure.