Rose expert Dave Kenny rounds-up his year
Growing organically has proven to be highly successful
This year I tried to grow my roses more organically. I used Uncle Tom’s Rose Tonic and a copper spray, which helped to slow down the spread of diseases. There's still some disease, and downy mildew has set in due to the damp weather and the shorter days, but it's not a serious problem. During the winter I'll clean up the fallen leaves as much as possible.
I dug out the weeds in the beds and spread compost from the seedling greenhouse on
them. I also spread farmyard manure on some beds. This has resulted in keeping the weeds down and the roses have grown rapidly and put on a great late display.
There have been huge changes in the rose world over the past several years. The number of roses grown in the UK has dropped from around 50 million to just over 10 million. This is due to gardens being smaller and people having less time and interest in gardening. It has been some time since a new rose has captured the public’s imagination like ‘Peace’ and ‘Super Star’ did. But there are still several excellent roses available. Some of the best are: the floribundas ‘Sirius’, ‘Eye of the Tiger’, ‘For Your Eyes Only’ and ‘Sweet Honey’, which is the Rose of The Year (ROTY) winner for 2020. The climbers ‘Scent from Heaven’ and ‘Starlight Symphony’ (ROTY winner 2019) would be excellent additions to any garden. Among hybrid teas are ‘Sunny Sky’, ‘Chandos Beauty’ and ‘Debbie Phillips’. I was impressed with the pink 'Bees Paradise' this year. It flowered its head off and attracted bees and hoverflies.