STARS OF THE ROSE SHOW
Shrub varieties are easy to grow and there’s one for every garden
REMEMBER DCI Gene Hunt in the classic back-to-the-1970s TV drama Life On Mars yelling: ‘Fire up the Quattro’?
Well, with maverick entrepreneur Elon Musk now on the case, you could soon be hearing police drivers in Britain imploring: ‘Fire up the Tesla!’
British police forces are in advanced discussions with Tesla with a view to trialling the zero-emissions Model 3s on their fleets.
It’s already happened in America where police departments — from New York to sunny California — are reporting significant savings on their running costs, as well as helping to keep the air clean. For a firm whose founder has ambitions for a mission to Mars — and is designing two cars to race on the planet — this is at least more down to Earth.
SHOULD you find yourself in the countryside this weekend, look out for Britain’s biggest rose exhibition. Admission is free and the exhibits adorn almost every hedgerow. The star plants, dog roses (Rosa canina), are now smothered with pink or white flowers. Wild dog roses are large, sprawling shrubs.
They’re too unruly for all but largest gardens. But there are lots of other, magnificent shrub roses, which are huge assets in a garden. Shrub roses are far
less trouble to grow than conventional bush varieties. Bedded roses need regular feeding and are susceptible to pests and diseases. Climbers and ramblers are demanding, too, needing annual pruning and training.
The best shrub roses are less likely to suffer from pests or diseases. Many need little or no pruning. They range from little bushes to enormous gangling shrubs. So you need to know what you’re planting.
Besides attractive flowers, shrub roses features can include decorative foliage, showy winter hips or even fancy thorns.
FREE OF KERFUFFLE
THE best shrub roses are rugged, vigorous and able to be neglected. Medium to large varieties blend readily with unrelated plants. Their cheerful summer flowers could follow lilacs, camellias and other spring plants.
Smaller varieties can be compact enough to include in a mixed border, with herbaceous plants and other shrubs. Many flower once, others repeat or have secondary attributes; fragrant leaves or distinctive fruits.
Many shrub varieties are too large for beds or a rose garden.
But as individual features, or in loose groups they’re impressive. In our former, larger garden Mrs C and I developed quite a collection lining a cherry walk.
Favourites included mid-size R. Nevada whose big, semidouble flowers opened cream, fading white. R. Marguerite Hilling was almost a twin but with pink flowers. A good conversation stopper was R. Cerise Bouquet. Growing 2.75m high, the loose branches carry semidouble flowers in high voltage shocking pink. Japanese dune roses, R. rugosa, come in some wonderful varieties, most with fragrance. One of the finest, R. Roseraie de L’Hay, has intensely fragrant magenta flowers.
WILD BEAUTY
SMALL to medium shrub roses blend readily with beddable varieties. Many from the David Austin resemble historic varieties but with modern attributes.
The modern R. Gertrude Jekyll has fragrant, petal-packed red blooms, similar to those of late 18th-century R. Charles de Mills. But she blooms all summer.
A few shrub roses are suitable even for tiny gardens. R. Perle d’Or is a dwarf polyantha with pale salmon flowers. They appear in flushes from June to early winter. R. Cecile Brunner, also a dwarf polyantha, carries little pink buds and double flowers all summer.
Several wild species make excellent garden shrubs. For coppery stems and blue-grey foliage, Rosa glauca is distinctive. Its small, pretty, pink flowers precede red autumn hips.
Full sun is best for most roses. Soils that retain moisture and are rich in organic matter will give the best results.
YOU can make sweet peas flower all summer — but only by constant dead-heading. If your plants are grown informally, do not allow them to develop seed pods. Regularly gather fresh flowers for the house, which will bring summer beauty indoors. Or remove all blooms as soon as they fade.
If you train your sweet peas as cordons, growing them up canes or vertical strings, gather fresh blooms every second or third day. If flowers are left to fade, remove them as soon as you can. Do not allow any pods to set.
With sweet peas trained as cordons, each plant should have a single stem. This is fixed gently to a tall cane using sweet pea rings or soft twine. Side-shoots are pinched out as soon as they appear. It is also usual to remove all tendrils.
That treatment results in remarkably different plants. The leaves grow much larger than on untrained plants. The flowers will also be larger with more on each stalk. The stalks themselves will be stronger and longer than with untrained plants. That makes them better for cutting and easier to arrange in a vase.
June is still not too late for sowing sweet pea seeds in the garden. You could grow those during the coming weeks and enjoy fresh blooms from August onwards.