I trust you are all having a wonderful Jubilee holiday and that the plans for street parties and village get-togethers in your part of the country have come to fruition. I have been enjoying my garden in the sunshine and the fruits of my labours from earlier in the year. The roses are in bloom and a pleasing number of foxgloves have survived the slugs this year - it doesn’t always happen!
I plant a mix of white, pink and apricot Digitalis dotted through the borders and here they are shown with Rosa ‘Eglantyne’, a David Austin New English shrub rose, Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’ Hesperis matronalis (Sweet Rocket), Lychnis, both the magenta and white forms, and what I thought was a self-seeded salvia , but which one eagle-eyed Instagram follower tells me is skullcap, a member of the mint family, much used in herbal medicine for anxiety. It has been seeding all over my garden for the last couple of years and I can tell it could get out of hand if I let it, but I am encouraging a few plants as the foliage is fresh and green with attractive heart shaped leaves and the tiny purple and white flowers are pretty and are currently blending nicely with the catmint.
The English shrub rose, ‘Eglantyne’
There are two roses along the wall at the back: the English climbing rose, ‘Constance Spry’, with its full cupped candy-pink blooms, again bred by David Austin, and named after the famous florist of the 1950s/60s, and alongside it, a very vigorous mystery rose that suddenly appeared at the back of the border a few years after I moved here. I decided to let it grow on to see what it was and when it flowered, found it had single pink blooms with a white centre and yellow stamens. It has the look of a wild rose and may have come from the root stock of one of the old hybrid teas that were in the border when I came. From research, it is most like R. villosa, the so-called Apple Rose, but I guess I shall never know. It certainly has the vigour of a wild rose with sharp thorns and long, extremely strong shoots that I am now also training over the pergola, but I sense I shall need to keep it in check.
English Climbing rose ‘Constance Spry’
The alliums are just going over in the border although I leave the seed-heads for their shape and also so they drop the seed to give me more flowers in future years. There is phlox, Acanthus, Japanese anemone and Rosa ‘The Fairy’ to come. I shall fill a couple of gaps with the tall growing, dark purple-flowered Salvia ‘Amistad’ and maybe a dahlia or two. My dahlias are all growing on in pots waiting for me to decide where to plant them, based on which ones survive from last year. I left them in the ground over winter for the first time and can just see the shoots of one or two coming through. I grow the salvias from cuttings. I used to buy new each year but it’s an expensive business with each plant costing around £10. So I take cuttings in the autumn before the frosts and grow them on in my utility room on the window sill.
Back to roses: on the pergola, is the old moss rose ‘William Lobb’ which has frilled, magenta flowers that age to violet and then fade to grey. It is actually a shrub rose but seems happy to be trained as a slow-growing climber. One look at the buds and stems tells you why these moss roses got their name. With it is the delightful ‘Blush Noisette’, whose lavish bunches of dainty flowers start pink in bud and become a paler pink ageing to white. On warm days, their scent is a delight as I pass along the path.
Moss rose ‘William Lobb’ and climber ‘Blush Noisette’
At the end of this border, just before the pergola there is a Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’, the corkscrew hazel, whose twisted branches are sculptural in winter and attractive when the catkins come in spring. It is very slow growing and I thought it would be fine when I planted it in this position several years ago, but the border is actually a bit narrow for it and it is encroaching on the path, so I have to cut some of the twisted branches off from time to time. No matter, they look lovely in a vase accompanying almost any flowers. Once clothed with leaves in the summer it looks a little uninteresting, so I have grown the clematis ‘Étoile Violette’ over it. The dark purple flowers work nicely in this border as a contrast with the pinks, whites and apricots and it will eventually scramble up the stems of the roses on the wall and pergola.
Roses proliferate too, in the border opposite this one, on the other side of the oval lawn. The whole look here is much darker with deep magenta roses and purple hardy geraniums. There is also a dark flowered Malva (mallow) that has grown to over five foot, on the corner of the border. I think this is because it was very well watered early in the year. It will seed around and about so I shall hopefully have more plants in years to come. The shrubs at the back of this border are Buddleja davidii ‘Black Knight’ with its deep purple, almost black, conical flowers, the dark leaved Sambucus nigra and a Lavatera with pale lavender-coloured flowers that I bought a few years ago from Sissinghurst. A group of hydrangea ‘Annabel’ provide colour contrast. All of these will begin to flower in the next week or two and become the focus as the pale border fades away.
Elsewhere in the garden, the lilacs and Viburnum opulous, (the snowball tree), have finished flowering and I have finally cut the heads off the Euphorbia wulfenii. They really are amazing: their chartreuse-green flowers come out in early spring and last around 10 weeks, forming the back drop first to narcissi, then tulips and honesty, then, finally sweet rocket and love in a mist. I cut them as they begin to turn a less attractive yellow and begin to seed all over the place. Even with the flowers gone, the blue-grey foliage makes an attractive backdrop for the other flowers that will follow in the shape of Cosmos, Ammi majus, campanulas, dahlias and the silvery bracts of Eryngium giganteum, ‘Miss Wilmott’s Ghost’.
Love in a Mist and Sweet Rocket with Euphorbia wulfenii in the background
One of the biggest challenges in a smallish garden is to plan for a succession of colour from spring through till autumn. It is much easier in larger country gardens with an acreage, where there is space to have a number of different areas each hidden from the others, where the planting can be created to look good at various points in the season, so there is always something of interest.
I am pleased I have achieved a reasonable balance in this garden although it does involved more work in planting out annuals and biennials to bolster the shrubs and perrenials and to fill in the flowering gaps as other plants fade. Still, as we all know, that is the way of things with gardening: the work is never done and even when we think it is, something else that needs doing catches our eye and off we go again!
Which are your favourite roses? I would love to hear about your garden and the plants you like to grow. If there is something you’d like to tell me, please leave a comment and I shall respond
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Loved this, and seeing all those lovely pictures and planting combos. And it’s so true: the work is never done! The great appeal (and sometimes source of stress) of gardening…
Yes all set for Village lunch , tea and BBQ . Overhead thunder for an hour and half yesterday put the kybosh on everything - the field above us took a hit . We walked up to the trig point later to see the Red Arrows stream into Torbay . We thought they might not fly as the cloud base was low but true to form they surprised us flying in from Dartmoor . They seem to always use our trig point for reference. So anyway we have all the roses bowing low - including Constance Spry , Fantain Latour , astrantia by the bucket load and alchamilla growing strongly too. Birds are fledging everywhere so we are watching the cat .
Plenty of singing done and to do - village concert Friday and morning service today.