Gardening tips

[Guest Husky]

This easter we are finally getting round to sorting out our overgrown back garden and are hitting the nurseries. We want to buy some rose bushes..but there is such a large variety and price....anyone had a success with them.

[snifter]

Roses seem to do very well here. We have many types in our garden. Planted for different areas. Some in the rocks so more sprawling type of rose, others climbing a trellis, others free standing but different types.

 

End of the day think it comes down to what style and colours and flower types you like. We have ones with trunks, others sprawling, climbing, the flower heads vary on each.....

 

Also the amount of work/time they can take to maintain and keep looking good to prolong flowering can be a pain but if you only have a few its not so bad. Spraying for black spot in spring, treating for bugs over the spring/summer etc. No matter what type of rose, it can affect them.

 

My one bug bear is that the ones with larger single headed flowers have a tendancy to burn to a crisp if they happen to come out of bud during a hot spell. These lovely buds then end up like dried flowers and are dead as. I try to get out and cut them if I know a stinker of a hot day is following but don't always have time or remember. End up losing those flowers then. Has happened twice over the summer to some of my lovely red roses out back.

[NicF]

I had roses in the garden of the rental house and they just kept growing and flowering with pretty much no input from me. I would go out and dead head them occasionally and they got watered every now and then when we decided it was really hot and we should put the watering system on, but otherwise they were left to their own devices. We now live in our own house and I have 3 standard white roses in the front garden. They get watered once a week on our automatic watering system and when it's hot we will put the system on again once or twice in-between but otherwise they just get left. I spend a bit more time dead heading them and I spray occasionally if they are particularly infested with anything but otherwise they get left. Roses really do seem to do very well around here without too much care and attention (they are used on the roundabouts near us). Have a look in the gardens of your local area and see if many people are growing roses - if they are then it's likely roses will do well in your garden as well.

 

As for variety, just pick which ever you like the look of most. Anything cheap is likely to grow what ever you do and anything that seems more expensive than other roses will probably need a bit of extra care and attention. Have a read of the labels before buying anything to make sure there is nothing about the plant that might mean it will not be happy in the position you want to grow it, but otherwise just choose the ones you like the best.

[zebedee]

I don't do anything with ours - no water, no care, and yet they still grow at insane rates. Keeping a few but slowly removing the majority of them, just not my thing.

[snifter]

I don't do anything with ours - no water, no care, and yet they still grow at insane rates. Keeping a few but slowly removing the majority of them, just not my thing.

 

We've so many its a mission to keep up with them. I must admit as much as I like to look at roses, the upkeep of so many is a real chore. Thankfully we are streamlining our garden and turning one side into a veg/fruit patch with some chooks and then the other side will have more lawn and different shrubs added instead. We'll only take out about 20 or so but its at least something.

[Blossom]

Not sure where you are, but if you are looking for a good range of roses The Fulham Gardener on Tapleys Hill Road has a great range. It looks tiny from the front, but our the back it's mostly roses.