A rosy view of Joburg
TOUR OF TOP ROSE GARDENS: OVER 80 DIFFERENT VARIETIES IN FOUR SHOW GARDENS
Many were fragrant, most were the classic hybrid tea and floribunda roses.
Every year Ludwig’s Roses leads a bus tour through top Joburg rose gardens for gardeners to see different varieties and to get ideas. This year’s October tour visited rose gardens at Waterfall Country Estate, a well-established rose garden in Waverly, a revamped Saxonwold garden and a large garden in Bryanston.
The number of roses in each garden ranged from 500 to over 1 000. Between them, the gardens featured more than 80 different varieties. Many were fragrant, most were the classical hybrid tea rose and floribunda roses, usually low growers planted as a border in front of taller hybrid teas. That the gardens looked so good after two years of drought is testimony to the staying power of the rose.
Five tips for rose gardens:
Each garden on the tour had its challenges. Here are some tips:
In mixed borders, plant pockets of roses between other plants. |Grouping roses makes them out better. If it’s too shady, thin out the canopy of trees and prune shrubs so there is enough light and room for the roses. If tree roots are a problem, use plant boxes for the roses. In beds that get morning shade and hot afternoon sun, plant the roses close together, 30 to 60cm apart, so they shade each other. If most of the garden is on a slope, build raised beds that retain the soil and protect the rose roots from competition with nearby trees. A combination that caught everyone’s eye was a bed of Deloitte and Touche roses (peach, apricot and orange) underplanted with Happy Home, a fragrant, low-growing floribunda with the same, but more intense colouring.
Rose poll: Five best roses:
We asked participants to name five roses that caught their attention. These are the winners:
Black Tea: a tall hybrid tea rose created in Japan. Its blooms start off orange-red and darken.
Double Delight: strong perfume and photo-sensitive petals that turn scarlet in the sun.
The Granny’s: cascading, groundcover roses with small blooms in soft pink, cerise and apricot-cream.
Linda Anne: has porcelain-pink blooms.
Equal votes went to Ingrid Bergman, a red hybrid tea rose, and South Africa, a disease-resistant floribunda rose with large golden yellow double blooms.
The Peace rose: introduced just after World War II by French rose breeder Meilland, it’s still the world’s most popular rose. There was only one of these with one bloom, yet it was so magnificent it was voted the eighth most popular rose. Rose tasks for November:
Water three times a week. Spray fortnightly against black spot, aphids, beetles and bollworm with Ludwig’s Insect Spray mixed with Chronos. Fertilise in the middle of November with Vigorosa and water well afterwards.