Author: Jackie Hamilton

At the halfway point of May, which is today, the marvelous weather has taken a turn for the worst and it’s currently persisting down. Those poor folks in Canterbury would be so jealous, it seems to have forgotten how to rain there. Actually, despite lots of gorgeous fine weather in the last 4 weeks, we really don’t need it. A small shower would have sufficed, this deluge entirely childish on the perpetrator’s part.

Whilst still  Autumn, we had 3 beauty frosts this last week. Despite a well timed gradual drop in night time temperature leading up to the trio, it still surprised quite a lot of plants which are now looking extremely unattractive! It’s always interesting to observe which of the Salvias are fully frost hardy, (well hardy to the gentle frosts we experience in the upper Waikato). In one group of 3 in my big border, the Leucanthe is hit particularly hard (have now hacked it back to ground level a bit earlier than usual) also Iodantha which has just started it’s epic Winter flowering is looking a bit unhappy. Waverly in the middle is completely unphased. Likewise the giant Confertiflora and Madrensis, which always look almost tropical like with their big fleshy leaves, Looks belie…

The big talking point this Autumn is the deciduous colour. Not only have the trees been magnificent in their hues, but also many perennials and shrubs which I had no idea had it in them. The Gooseneck Lysimachia down amongst the Pimpinellifolias in the Species Garden  is mixing beautifully with the turning roses. Usually it is just the odd few roses that have remarkable Autumn colour here, most especially Nitida, but this year all the “pimps” and indeed the gallicas and other old fashioneds are putting on a colourful show.

Then there was that other Autumn colour on a beautiful crisp starlit night…the magical Aurora Australis captured by Alice on her deck.

I’ve been hard out making cuttings whilst the time seems right. Not that you ever know the “right ” time to make a cutting that might strike…it seems to be entirely up to the plant and allows no kudos to the cutter.

I keep the 10 page document labelled  “Roses we grow” at the shed and try to be meticulous about putting a tick by each name as I make it. I set off from the shed with my cutters with a plan in mind for a number of roses which I store in my head, to collect wood. Invariably I see one that’s not in my head and think I’ll get that while I’m in the district, so to speak. Back to the shed with an armful, or possibly a trolley full of specimens. Then I tick them off…uh oh, I already have a tick by that extra…all good, they all sell by the end of the season! Luckily I almost always am doing this alone, as it’s important to memorise the stems as I go. I spend quite a bit of time deciding which branch (or twig in some cases) to cut from each bush, so can remember when I get back to the shed which came from who. I must be extra careful if I’m harvesting say Teas from the Tea Bank, as their leaves and growth habit can be very similar. Ditto if I’m down the front collecting Wichuriana ramblers. If I’m at all concerned I keep some wrap around labels in my pocket which I can attach as I cut. Having ticked the roses on The List, I write the labels with name and date, then sit down and work my way through the prickly stems putting them in pots of cutting mix. It is a very very prickly job, and somedays I certainly tire of being pricked. The Rugosas are particularly daunting and I have to force myself to do a few every now and then. I then arrange the pots in their types under a shade cloth area and hope for the best. They always seem so viable at the time of making, butalas a very high proportion just go ahead and die en masse.

Over the years I have become very familiar with the families that do or don’t. Having spent many years breeding families of horses, I am a strong believer in genetics…it never ceased to amaze me how many traits were shared with certain families. The same goes for roses. My nemesis are the Noisettes and Bourbons. Certainly 2 of my favourite families, but 2 of the least likely to strike. For me anyway. There are exceptions of course, but I’ll bet my bottom dollar if I knew all their DNA I would find answers for the exceptions!

The David Austins, (and no doubt other modern roses, but I don’t have many of them) are a very interesting lot in this discussion as they are derived from many different old families. Unsurprisingly the ones with Noisette and Bourbon in their heritage are massively less likely to strike than others. Graham Thomas is one of these. I recently dug up a giant plant of him to make way for the new arbour, and moved him to the back fence. I made 3 huge pots of perfect cutting wood from strong growing arms. A mere few weeks later and they’re already all dead! Disheartening but in no way unexpected.

Up until the late 90’s , all the breeding of the new releases was “advertised” in the David Austin books. I found it quite captivating to see how the genetics had come together to produce this wonderful new plant. Sadly this is no longer the case, now it’s all a secret.

Between cutting days I’ve been trying to get some of my gardens in order before our last Open Day on June 23rd. At least now it’s almost winter, the work one does remains looking ok for a time as the march of the eternal weeds slows down. Unfortunately my arthritic hands do not enjoy pulling weeds these days. A few hours weeding and amending equals a few days of extreme pain, so I have to control my urges and do little and often and hope a stronger specimen of person shows up to do some extreme gardening!

I love Autumn. Obviously Spring is great in its abundance, but its very …busy. Autumn is much more peaceful, especially if the weather acts like it’s supposed to! Summer is altogether too hot for me, it’s my least favoured  season. Winter has high points like fires at night (or indeed all day) and hotties in bed, but the weather can get a bit intrepid for gardening. Autumn is obviously perfect, so long as you receive some Autumn rains, which we have.  The watering travail is hugely lessened and one can start planting some of the things that have been sitting around drooping in their pots all summer.

I wouldn’t usually expect March to really be Autumnal, it’s usually more like Summer, but this year it seems to have come early. Maybe the seasons heard about Easter being early…We’ve already had some nice chilly nights, the trees are starting to turn and drop their leaves, and the Spring bulbs are starting to appear already. I bought a lot of new ones this season, to fill up an area under the auspices of the Puriri tree. They always sprout quicker out of packets than they do in the ground.

The roses are having a good season. For once we’ve had just the right amount of rain, so they’re still flowering well. The flowers are still more like Summer flowers at this stage, but soon they will start producing their Autumn perfection blooms, which are my favourite. Maybe a bit smaller, but often more intense in colour and form.

The Asters this year have outdone themselves. Not only have they put on a wonderful strong show, but they also seem to have self seeded a lot in last Summer’s crazy rain and I have lots that have come up in new shades, mostly in very inconvenient places!

Whilst we do grow the old fashioned Michaelmas daisy type aster, which run at the root and can be rather a menace, these ones are clumping types that luckily stay in one place (except when they self seed!)

Because it’s feeling Autumnal early, I’ve made a start on cuttings for the season. At this stage I’m concentrating on plants with plenty of spare wood as there’s a high chance most of them will die and I’ll have to try again a bit later in the year. They are such fickle things though, rose cuttings…you never know when they’re going to do it!

I was reading my garden diary from a few years ago recently and was surprised to read I was potting up cuttings I’d made in February! “Wish I’d made more”, I said. You never bloody know what’s gonna work!!!

We are planning another Open Day for April (21st) so I’m also potting up things as I amend the Autumn garden which will provide a few new faces for that. We certainly have plenty of roses for sale too.

Another fun thing about Autumn is the hips on the roses colouring up, there are so many different shapes, sizes, textures and colours. The softer ones. like the Rugosas you have to grab quick before the birds and the mice. The harder ones are much better for a winter show, although eventually they all get eaten. Here is half a bucket I’ve grabbed before other predators to boil up for some rose hip syrup. The vitamin C count is off the register, so very good for fighting off winter ailments…

One last Autumn mention this year are the Dahlias. They’re having a lot of fun with the right amount of water  (a lot but no immersions) and sun (a lot but not too hot…)  Some start quite early in the Summer, others in late Summer /Autumn. If you keep dead heading them, they will keep flowering. If they get out of hand (common in my garden) you can cut them back hard and they will go again (so long as its not too close to Winter) Added bonus, when they resprout you can take these fresh bits for cuttings and they have a good strike rate.

If you aren’t so good at controlling your dahlias, you tend to get a lot of seedlings. Some end up being of note, and worth keeping on and propagating. Some . like this single here, are just pretty in passing…

So that’s it for March, next comes what is usually my fave with Easter time and now my granddaughter’s birthday as well a s my own , it tends to attract family gatherings, always nice!

OK! Third time lucky. This time I am really going to write a Blog and publish it…a year will be too long for a come back, and 2024 is marching on. I will start this blog for February with November’s attempt and carry on at the other end….

The Prodigal Blogger

Well here we are in November and not a word has been uttered for several months. Life got away on me a bit…starting with a chronically overgrown garden and finishing with a string of Open Days and a new baby in the family.

Priorities have had to be made and unfortunately my poor website was the loser!

I am told by “those that know these things” that we are going to have a terrible drought again this Summer, but as it’s still Spring I guess, it’s been raining a fair bit still. On the other hand we’ve had lots of glorious days, including last Sunday for our big November day. Despite the continual inundations for pretty much a whole year, the plants that didn’t die are looking pretty good this season. The soil is rather impacted in places, continuous underwaterness has taken it’s toll, so replanting has involved a lot of extra work. First removing the acres of very happy buttercup, then forking the soil and adding some pumice and sheep manure to try and return the soil to its previous friability. Overall I seem to be winning, and the new plants are going for it.

I have lost a sad amount of roses this last year. Some are old grafted plants and I think all the wet tipped them over. Others have died for no apparent reason. If I have a cutting grown plant well and good, the original is replaced, but unfortunately there are many I have never managed to cajole into growing their own roots, and these may well be lost forever as so many of the old varieties are no longer available.

It’s not that I haven’t got enough roses…at this time of year, I can look out absolutely every window in the house, big or small and see some rose or many flowering its heart out!

Nevertheless its sad to lose old friends…We live and learn, some of us more slowly than others! The lesson I have learned relatively recently , is to keep a cutting grown plant early on in the proceedings. What appears to be very vigorous and easy to grow can weaken and no longer provide good cutting wood.

and so , on with the show…February MUST be published! and every month there-on.

The alleged drought has made for the best Summer garden weather you could ask for. Sure, it’s a drought compared to last year as we’ve had lots of hot (often too hot for me) sunny days, but interspersed with rain events that have kept things growing like bejesus. Hay and baleage production has been unprecedented, all the farmers have grass coming out their ears and like many in the district, the men folk here have spent a lot of time on tractors topping paddocks to try to get some control of them. And the weeds in them!!! Like the gardens, the paddocks got overrun by weeds in the big wet last year.

The gardens have thrived this season past. The roses put on a great show, as well as the Irises. Currently the Hydrangeas are spectacular, although mine are all bluer than ever, even the pink and white ones, which indicates I should spread another dose of lime with the Autumn fertiliser.

My gardening duties are constantly waylaid by events…I broke my foot in the New Year, tripped up the steps in some unsuitable footwear…I currently have a nasty headcold which I caught by foolishly leaving the garden for long enough to go shopping. This has slowed productivity down too.

Speaking of productivity, the vegetable garden is a hive of it this season…currently preserving tomatoes left right and centre. Great potato crop brought in, ditto pumpkins and the cucurbits are waaaay out of control. Thank goodness for non-gardening visitors and hungry chickens!

Other than coping with veg surplus, my present obsession is finding/making places in the garden to plant the odd new rose…Having learnt that Tasman Bay roses, with young James at the helm, is moving, to start afresh nearby, I decided to make a really big order as there will be none available for the next 2-3 years from them. Hence, quite a few new, or replacement roses for me, and a lot of grafted plants available in the nursery this Winter.

The roses and perennials are really going for it this Summer. Lots of new basal shoots at last to boost the older weakening rose bushes, which is very good to see. It bodes well for strong cutting wood in the Autumn. The Salvias have great happiness and along with the Asters are filling the gardens with colour. Over in the “Hot Garden” the late Summer/Autumn perennials and annuals are huge and making a big bright impact. The sunflowers have been particularly impressive.

So that is about what you can get for the first blog in a while. It is imperative that I publish it and not save to complete or it may never happen!!! After a Summer break from full on Open Days, we are planning one for the end of Feb. The nursery is bursting and we have a lot of interesting roses available. Adios

I’m pretty sure that’s a title of a Queen song…my dear Cousin, who shares my borderline obsession, says they’re better than Shakespeare for offering suitable sayings! Oh dear, aren’t we sad…

In this case, referring to the approach of the Shortest Day, the Winter Solstice. Climatically this is the start of Winter, despite being nagged by people that Winter starts on 1 June, I find this fact to be the truth. Just as Summer really starts on the longest day in December. It makes Winter so much more bearable, when, as it starts, the damned short days start to stretch imperceptibly on a daily basis.

Obviously our Winter days are incredibly long compared to those in really Northern or Southern locations…for instance the Poles! Northern and Southern Poles that is, although I’m sure the days are also relatively shorter for the people in Poland. Even those friends and family in the South Island of our own country have a shortest day nearly an hour shorter than us. However, ours are short enough for me, especially on a drear day like today.

My daughter has just told me I can’t complain about the amount of rain we had in the night, as we’ve just enjoyed an unprecedented 10 fine days! I beg to differ, having just been reminded of what life can be like without non stop rain! Things dried up really well, with some nice frosts to help things along, and gardening suddenly felt like fun again.

Now however we have descended back to the non stop rain and flooding. It doesn’t take much to cause a flood these days, but we’re getting much anyway. Bla bla bla weather!

To be honest there’s not much else to talk about at the moment. We’ve had to start feeding out to the cattle, which causes mind blowingly deep mud with the tractor…the buggies can hardly get around the hills. Garden tasks are carried out in brief finer spells. I bought a ton of lime to dress all the gardens with. I think the constant flooding has leeched all the nutrients and soured our already acidic soil further, giving rise to the buttercup takeover. This isn’t something one can do in the rain as the lime quickly turns to sludge and then concrete! I’m also fertilising all the roses etc with a healthy dollop of sheep manure and chemical fert. Hoping for some early Spring growth to happen, to compensate for the lack of Autumn action.

I recently was reading my garden diary from last year (it’s very hit and miss, but interesting none the less) and at this time complaining of the lack of Autumn basal shoots on the roses…it had been too dry…So that makes 2 seasons running where the roses have not put on any growth in the Autumn. It’s no wonder so many of them are looking “thin”. Here’s hoping for a miraculous Spring!

I know that some of the roses are usually still making a bit of a show in June, but this year they’re looking pretty over everything! Even the Teas aren’t offering much.

The Winter flowering shrubs seem unaffected, the camellias, Micaelyas and Gordonias seem happy enough. I guess they all like rain and acid soil, so there you go! As for the Citrus, they have mega happiness with very large fruit. The early easy peel mandarin had all its fruit rot on the tree tho, before they were quite ripe. Very stinky…

Oh blast, June is well over and this blog is still unfinished. As usual the problem is an IT one which I am always quite unable to fix…for some reason the website is suddenly saying the photos from my iphone are too big to download. They’re just the same as they’ve always been, so who knows? Certainly not me. I’ll just have to put in some old or dumb photos and get this blog published. I urgently need to get on with some “sold out” updates on the roses pages as the orders are coming in thick and fast and I’m selling out of everything!

So that’s it for June! Usually one of my favourite months of the year, but another to be glad to have got through this year! I’m really hoping July is going to be better!

Autumn is shaping up to be a lot more acceptable than Summer…we have had a fair amount of Autumn rain but in acceptable quantities now. It’s quite funny reading last years diaries for Autumn, so excited to get 20 mils of rain at a time to water the parched ground. This year it’s more like “we’ve only had 56 mils of rain in the last week, bonus!”

It has certainly been an interesting 6 months. Watering times have been at a minimum, but the other end of the stick is weeding times… Never, in 40 years of gardening have I battled (and lost) the weed war to such an extent. As I crouched under a rose bush last week, hacking at buttercup roots, my mind was weighing up the pros and cons of country gardening. Country gardening is all I’ve ever done really. I’ve had 2 gardens in my life to date, both encompassed within a farm. There are so many advantages, like having the space to steal another cow/horse paddock when the mood takes you, and the availability of paddocks on the other side of the fence of every garden where weeds can be chucked for the stock to pick over at a later date… However the down side of being surrounded by paddocks is the paddocks encroaching on the gardens in all directions. Buttercup, dock, sheep sorrel and of course, grass are constantly spreading thru the fences and overtaking the gardens.

I do have some experience in “town gardens”, from tending those of family and friends, and whilst any garden anywhere can be full of nasty weeds, I feel the typical paddock weeds can be a lot more over powering. Number one on my hate list this season has to be buttercup…it loves the damp and at this time of year is usually straggly and easy to pull out, if not indeed dead. This season it has taken on new proportions in it’s extreme happiness. Some of the plants are more than 2 feet tall with leaves the size of…something bigger than buttercup! It is also extremely strongly rooted in the ground and very hard on arthritic fingers to dig out.

Buttercup is just one among many that has thrived in this saturated season we have had. I see I ranted about the wet weather for pretty much my whole last blog, so I’ll change the subject to something more interesting…

Hmmm, guess it’s going to be about roses as this is supposedly a rose website. It’s the time of year to be getting heavily into making cuttings. I’ve actually already done quite a large amount in the late Summer and early Autumn as conditions somehow felt right and I was hoping for grand results. Cuttings growing is a great leveller and alas most of them have already died…they die a lot quicker at the growy time of year! However a few always grow and often some of the more recalcitrant numbers.

Speaking of which I’ll elaborate on the different families of roses and which I find easier to grow from cuttings.

5’s. (These are the most reliable rooters. Most will take almost any time of year with pretty high success rates)

Multiflora and crosses, Wichuriana crosses. This encompasses a large proportion of the rambling roses, plus some bushes which are multiflora X like de la Grifferie and The Active

4’s (This group is pretty generous at the right time of year and can be successful at the wrong time of year)

Most of the Polyanthas and some of the Chinas

3’s (This group will reliably grow at least one or 2  from a bunch more often than not)

Other Chinas, a lot of the Teas, helpful Rugosas, Gallicas, some of the species’ most of the Hybrid Musks

2’s ( This group is highly unpredictable , no guarantees here)

These are the probably biggest group, including the Hybrid Perpetuals, Damasks, Portlands, recalcitrant Teas and all the Modern Hybrids. This last includes the David Austin hybrids.

1’s ( skip and dance if one of these takes)

Some roses like pimpinellifo;ias will almost never take from a cutting, even tho they sucker like mad things on their own roots. Albas, Mosses and Bourbons are also very stubborn. There are always exceptions to each group as most roses are multiple crosses. Noisettes are also often seemingly impossible, with a few exceptions which are rampant weeds…

Whilst there are many roses in my garden I have been trying to root for well over 20 years on a regular basis, I shan’t give any an 0, as I live in hope that one day it will happen!!

On that ever hopeful note I will leave you for now. It is currently raining hard and forecast to keep it up for the next 10 days. High temperatures too, so the buttercup will be even happier…

Well, it’s March now, 2023 marches on, and technically Autumn is upon us. Autumn usually follows Summer, but in this case it appears to be tacked onto the veeeeeery long Spring. I know other parts of the country have experienced some Summer, but bar a few small collections of sunny days with a bit of Summer heat, we have made it to March unscathed by burning sun or even steamy humidity. Temperatures have remained pleasant, I’ve only turned on my brand spanking new ac unit 3 times! Even the biggest heat wuss in the world has mostly got by without having to hide in the house from 9-5 everyday…

Instead we’ve just had a tad of rain. I’m thinking something in the region of three quarters of a metre this summer, quite possibly a metre. I’ve lost count of the events, but I know we had around 350 in Hale, which was the biggest fall for us. We really dodged the bullet with Gabrielle, only 115 mils of rain and a few blown over trees. We get them anytime. Most of the other farms my husband manages around Auckland and the Waikato fared worse, but nothing like the poor folks in so many other North Island locations.

Main result is a mixture of crazy growth alongside a lot of untimely deaths. What dies when it rains this much in Summer? Answer is pretty much all grey foliaged plants, for a start. Grey foliage often equates to drought tolerantness (yes Word, I know that’s not a word) which equates to dying when one is waterlogged all summer.

My main rose/perennial borders are relatively low lying and tend to pool water in Winter after heavy rain…or possibly all Spring/Summer. This has led to the demise of many shrubby perennials. Most of the lavender have been dumped, along with the majority of the modern daisies. A small aside about said modern hybrids…In large, they keep none of the attributes their originators, the Marguerite  daisies flaunt. They are drought intolerant, frost intolerant (that was a surprise in the unseasonal October frost we had in ’22), hard prune intolerant and what do you know, flood intolerant. They have fallen in droves in the last 14 months, whilst the 4 old cultivars I grow (2 different white, 1 double pink and 1 double yellow) carry on whatever the weather. However, there are exceptions…these miniaturised, hybridised daisies have been around for about 25 years now, and over the years of  buying and growing every new one I came upon in a garden centre, I have a few that have totally stood the test of time. Some that had passed all the endurance tests up till this summer, have unfortunately fallen at the last hurdle…the Noah floods of  ’22/’23. However, there are still a few left and these get the giant tick of approval from me and will be the ones I continue making cuttings of and sharing around. Many of the “latest” might as well be potted colour!

That was a long rant….on with the show. So whilst some of the Autumn stalwarts have fallen, others are saying whilst they are built to withstand the dry heat of Autumn, give them a metre of rain and they will flourish! The asters are Number One on this list in my garden this Autumn. They are magnificent! So too the Dahlias and nearly all the Salvias. Excepting those with grey leaves…they are either dead or struggling.

I now have a new list of  “double tick plants”. These are those who survive drought and flood. It’s not a long list, but guess who’s at the top? Roses of course. They are certainly the toughest of the tough and survive whatever the crazy weather throws at them….I have to say a lot of my old fashioneds in the top of the border are in danger of disappearing in the sea of Asters and Salvias, but I’m sure in a month or so when I cut back the offenders they’ll be just fine underneath. The lack of humidity this Summer has probably saved the disease prone of this genus, as there was little enough spraying opportunities.

We are currently experiencing true Autumn weather…lovely sunny days, interspersed of course with a few sprinkles of rain, just to keep the crazed growth going. I have never, in my nearly 40 years of farming, ever known grass growth like we are currently dealing with! Moving cows and horses is pretty much about giving them a change of scenery rather than feeding them. And the lawns just keep on growing! Lawn mowing has been a twice weekly occurrence this season, no break since September!   So the upsides are many…no garden watering necessary and the Nursery has been comparatively easy this Summer. Losing a lot of plants to the sog is a bummer, but lucky for me I am usually making cuttings of things to on sell, so oftentimes I haven’t lost the plant at all.  We also have found a plethora of plants in the bargain bins at the local Garden Centres as clearly there have been many holiday weekends which have not lent themselves to pottering in the garden. Sorry guys, your loss is our gain!    That’s probably enough waffle for now, so I’ll love you and leave you.