Get that rosy glow
Now summer is finally here, it’s time to come up smelling of roses with the best on offer
In my local garden centre this week, my eye was drawn to the gorgeous beauty, Darcey Bussell.
No, it wasn’t the prima ballerina doing a spot of plant shopping, but a rose named after the great dancer – a burgundy shrub rose with petals so velvety you cannot resist touching them and inhaling their delicious fragrance.
It’s a good time to go rose shopping as you can see (and smell) what you’re purchasing – this is sometimes hard to imagine in winter when they are just a bunch of thorny stems in a pot.
June is roses’ peak month, when they produce their first and showiest flush of blossoms. If the rose is a repeat flowerer, there will be a second flush later in the year, but the first display of roses is the sweetest and heralds the official start of summertime.
At home, ‘Cinderella’ has just started to burst into flower – this is a climber with masses of pale pink scented flowers. It only grows to about 1.5m tall so it’s suitable for the smaller garden. ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ has been a powerhouse of incredibly fragrant, rose pink flowers for a couple of weeks now – it’s a regular job deadheading them.
‘Madame Alfred Carriere’ is climbing with great vigour – this grows to 5m and will provide scented white flowers until autumn.
One of the best scents comes from the rugosa rose ‘Roserai de l’hay’ – this is great even on poor soil and makes an excellent fragrant hedge. I’d like to introduce a golden rose to my plot as well – I’m contemplating ‘Lady Hillingdon’, described by a naughty gardening friend of mine as “terrible in bed, but great up against a wall!” It’s a classic tea rose climber with strongly fragrant apricot blooms.
With all this work, roses can come under stress and need attention. First they need a good feed to replenish their supplies. This can come in the form of a special rose feed, manure or just a regular liquid feed.
Inspect the leaves – are they covered in greenfly? I tend to just squash them between my fingers and otherwise rely on the general insect eating population to do their bit. In my experience, a garden that encourages wildlife and doesn’t use pesticides tends to keep a healthy balance between predators and pests.
If you choose a healthy variety of rose, diseases shouldn’t be a problem, but you can boost their resistance by applying a foliar feed like Maxicrop or SB Plant Invigorator.
Roses love plenty of water at the roots so, at this time of year, giving them an occasional good soaking will help encourage strong growth and quicker repeat flowering – especially significant for roses near to walls or hedges. If you do water them, try to avoid getting the leaves wet or watering early in the day. This is so the leaves can dry out quickly, otherwise you may well be encouraging black spot.
Lots of us get nervous when confronted with secateurs and a rose bush – what to do?
There are many complicated theories about pruning but you’re best keeping it simple – cut them down to around half their size in late winter/early spring. If they’re well established, choose one or two old stems and cut them out completely at base level which will encourage healthier new stems. And with climbers, prune previous year’s flowering shoots to between 4-6in.