PLANTS

Whether you grow roses for colour, scent or picking, follow our experts’ advice to ensure the perfect bloom

Ensure your roses look their best with our experts’ advice

‘Roses are probably my favourite of all flowers’ Rachel Siegfried

With their heavily scented, sumptuous blooms, roses exude an old-fashioned charm that appeals to almost everyone and make the most romantic arrangements, whether displayed singly, clustered in posies, or thrown together with other summer flowers in a looser composition. For rachel siegfried, who grows cut flowers on her farm in oxfordshire, england, roses are an essential in the cutting patch. ‘roses are probably my favourite of all flowers,’ she says. ‘I grow repeat-flowering, scented roses. scent is so important because that is what is missing when you buy roses in the shops. They’ve had the scent bred out of them so that they can be transported from the main rose-growing countries – Kenya, ecuador and Colombia. scent shortens vase life, so that’s why it has been bred out.’

rachel grows a mixture of hybrid teas, floribunda and shrub roses, choosing those that perform best over a long season. Because she is picking so intensively from her plants, they will eventually become unproductive, so she replants afresh every five or six years to rejuvenate her stock. In most circumstances, however, plants would last at least 10 years.

once the plants are established, they need to be pruned in late winter (although not just before or during a very cold snap). ‘We prune very hard – literally to about 30 to 40cm off the ground, leaving perhaps four main stems,’ says rachel. a‘ ll the normal pruning rules apply: cut out all dead wood and crossing branches, and cut the branches just above a main bud at an angle, so that the water can run off.’

Cutting the roses back brutally means that the regrowth produces long, straight picking stems, and it also takes out any potentially diseased material to rejuvenate the plant. after pruning, rachel mulches the roses with compost or manure and then waits for them to break bud. once this happens, the feeding regime can begin.

‘If you want your roses to repeat flower throughout the season, you have to feed each week,’ advises rachel, who uses a foliar feed high in potassium phosphate to make the plants more resistant to black spot and other diseases. ‘as the season progresses and the plant forms buds, you start giving them a high potash feed, like comfrey tea, which will keep the roses healthy and flowering in flushes through the season.’

october is prime rose month, with blooms coming thick and fast. at this stage, you just have to keep picking, and deadhead like mad every week to encourage more flowers. ‘You can pick roses when they’re quite tight in bud,’ says rachel. ‘as long as the sepals are reflexed back, they will open. I like to pick flowers in different stages of growth for a single arrangement – some quite blown, and some in bud. I’m never governed by vase life – I’m trying to make a painterly composition and that’s why I like them in different stages. The arrangement will then look as if it was transferred straight from the garden into the vase.’

The roses produce a second flush of blooms in late summer. after this, they are lightly pruned again, with a third of the growth lopped off to prevent windrock damage through the winter. at this point the feeding ceases. ‘roses are a huge amount of work,’ admits rachel. ‘But most people will need to have only two or three plants to cut from and they are so worth it. I cannot imagine my life without them.’