Western Morning News (Saturday)
A rosy view of life LOVE IS ALL AROUND
Roses are a beautiful addition to any garden – but if you want to enjoy them, you need to start planting them now
RED roses are a garden essential for the romantic at heart and now’s the perfect time to plant them. Red roses come in all shades, from light scarlet to nearly black – and most of them are good for cutting.
The roses you buy as cut flowers in florists are the one-flower-per-stem hybrid tea type. However, at home you can also grow multi-headed floribundas and climbers, as well as David Austin’s delightful English roses, which combine the charm of old-fashioned roses with the free-flowering habits of modern varieties.
There are plenty of red roses to choose from, so if you are thinking of planting some go for varieties with natural disease resistance and a good strong scent.
Some of the very best hybrid teas include “Alec’s red” (cherry red), “Deep Secret” (one of the very darkest), “Royal William” (crimson and long stemmed, good for cutting) and “Velvet Fragrance” (deep crimson with velvety petals).
For a climber, choose “Guinee”, deep red-black and semi frilly, or the climbing form of “Etoile de Hollande” (deep crimson with a very strong fragrance and, unlike many climbers, it will flower twice per summer).
For red new English roses look for “Darcey Bussell” (petite rich crimson rosette-shaped flowers and very healthy plants) and “LD Braithwaite” (brilliant scarlet, deep and double old rose-shaped flowers).
All roses enjoy a fairly open situation in full sun with deep and fertile, slightly heavy soil – clay loam is their favourite.
Plant within the next six or so weeks for a great show this summer, once you’ve enriched the soil generously with well-rotted manure or compost.
Mulch round roses annually in March, then top up nutrients by applying rose feed in April and again just after each flush of flowers through the summer.
Regular deadheading acts as summer pruning, but make sure you also prune hybrid teas and floribundas hard in mid-March, and tidy up the shapes of new English roses when they finish flowering at the end of summer.
Go for varieties with disease resistance and a good strong scent
A GOOD many plants have romantic common names. Varieties include bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis), love grass (Clytostoma callistigioides) and love-in-idleness (Viola tricolor), better known as heartsease, which is almost as good.
There’s passionflower (Passiflora caerulea), a fast, clingy beauty, and don’t forget lad’s love (Artemisia absinthium), which is a vital ingredient of absinthe liqueur.
You might settle for seeds of annual love-in-a-puff if you can overlook the less romantic Latin name, Cardiospermum halicacabum. Or there are love apples, which won an undeserved reputation as aphrodisiacs due to a slight error in translation centuries ago – nowadays we know them better as tomatoes.
One or two flowers have well-known romantic meanings. Rose stands for love – that’s why it’s the traditional Valentine’s Day flower – and forgetme-not means just that.
Coreopsis means love at first sight, gorse means enduring affection, while pansy means “you occupy my thoughts constantly”.
Tulips signify hopeless love if yellow, and are a declaration of love if red.
And don’t forget celandine, which signifies joys to come.