Grassroots Rose Nursery

Grassroots Roses Autumn open day

Sunday 29th March, 10am-4pm

Come get some healthy country air

Come and join us for another open nursery and gardens. A great range of old-fashioned roses and perennials available for sale, as well as country gardens to wonder through.

Admission is free and dogs on leads welcome.

An easy one-hour drive from Auckland central.

Grab a trolley and nab some rare and well prices plants for your garden this autumn.

No eftpos

761 Kaiaua Rd, Mangatangi, Sunday 29th March, 10am-4pm

So happy that we can officially declare Summer over! We were very lucky last week with a delightful 20 mils of rain. It certainly couldn’t be declared a drought breaker, there is still no feed for anything and the ground is a hard concrete block, but the grass took on a greenish hue (that whose roots hadn’t died) and we’ve had some more small showers and drizzle to keep the colour coming.

Even though it did apparently nothing to the ground moisture below an inch or so, its incredible how happy it made the plants.(those whose roots hadn’t died). And how happy it makes the gardeners! An end is in sight!

So in this spirit of hope we have decided to have our first open day since December at the end of the month. We have seriously big perennials available, which will quickly fill bare patches in the garden! Daily water and hot sun for 3 months equals plants bursting to be planted. The roses are also growing at great rates in their pots and have been producing the first of the sublime autumn flowers, which are always my favourites.

The roses in the garden are weathering the continued lack of moisture with brave faces…we have been very lucky down here with very low humidity most of the time (I believe this is not the case further North) so the disease has pretty much only been some blackspot and mildew due to water starvation. Many of the roses lost most of their leaves and stayed bare for the duration, but now they can sense Autumn and hopefully its associated rains coming, they are leafing and budding up for an Autumn show.

14 weeks post surgery I am gaining some normality at last, ie I can walk without support…but am still many months away from full recovery, so can only do short bursts in the garden at a time. This is the great thing about the drought…weeds haven’t been sprouting! So the garden will look respectable with a bit of amendment of spent or dead perennials. That is respectable by drought standards…Anyone thinking of coming to have a nosy or an autumn buy up, please don’t expect a show garden!!! Four months on the bench and with pretty much no rain for 3 months does not equal a pretty picture! Lots of dead bits on roses and dead things in garden…if you are experiencing the same drought prepare to feel much better about your own garden!

It’s been hard to create any enthusiasm to write a post this month. My daily garden tours are not something to look forward to, as they mostly just involve “what’s died today…”

We have a good  bore here, but also sixty something cows and thirty odd horses, all of which are living on dry feed, which makes them very thirsty. The grass is gone, except in the few little gullies, so their diet is hay and some silage. Obviously their welfare comes first, followed by the nursery. Our 2 large gardens are at the bottom of the heap of water commitments.

I spend an hour or so morning and evening, doling out meager  supplies to priority plants. More than this and the header tank gets emptied and then takes a very long time to fill again.

My first priority is any rare roses, which should they die, would be irreplaceable. If I have a cutting grown one in the nursery, they have to take their chances. For the roses, their chances are high, as they are definitely, not withstanding succulents, the toughest things in the garden when it comes to surviving and some indeed prospering, in a drought. Eventually they start to let their older shoots die, saving this season’s basal shoots to ride it out. Most of them are soldiering on at this stage, still  producing fleeting summer flowers. Most of the Teas have descended into mildew mode, they love the heat and insist on growing and flowering, but look less than attractive covered in mould!

At this stage there is no end in sight. February is probably my least favoured month. Eventually the days will shorten and cool and hopefully some decent rain will come before June. Last year the autumn rains never came, surely that won’t happen again?

It is still early January, and in our district, despite a recent unseasonal cold spell (over as of today!) the Spring-like cold and terrible wind have produced zero moisture and we are fast approaching drought conditions. I know some of you in other parts of the country have had heaps of rain, but sadly not at our place. The farms along the road are all feeding out already, we’re not far behind. It’s quite scary so early in the summer, especially considering what’s going on across the water in Oz. My heart goes out to the farmers and gardeners , although it’s sort of “normal” for drought over there…let’s face it, half their country is a desert. This is meant to be The Mighty Waikato! where grass abounds!!!

So…back to the garden. Or not, as I still have an annoying lump of concrete on my leg which seems to cause major swelling if I spend more than a couple of hours outside on my knee scooter. The good news about a drought is the weeds stop growing…that’s just starting to happen in some of the drier parts of the garden. They’re still going great guns through the mulch! You can judge the places to spend your alotted hours with the hose by the state of the weeds. Unfortunately some of the plants have already succumbed while I was holed up inside, but you can’t win them all and with the season heading the way I think it is, its important to prioritise and decide what to keep alive. Any newly planted (since early winter) roses are my first priority. Established roses will survive any normal Kiwi “drought”, but those planted recently recently will be in grave danger if not kept under scrutiny. Excessive watering is quite unnecessary, but a good deep drink every week or 2 will keep them happy.

It’s not feasible if you have a big garden and a broken leg, to keep gardens damp, so any plants that need damp conditions to survive need to be sacrificed and left to die quietly…A lot of the plants that like a lot of moisture, like the Japanese Irises and Hydrangeas won’t actually die, they’ll come back next year even if they look dead…(so long as they were established already)

But alas, many perennials will die quickly and its a good time to sort the wheat from the chaff so to speak, and really take note of and enjoy the thrivers and survivors and be sure to plant more of them for next summer!

As of 2 weeks and 1 day ago I’ve had an ankle fusion. Today I had the slab of concrete replaced with a sexy purple fibreglass cast. And guess what? It’s still just as boring. And it hurts more…

so….the garden continues in my absence as gardens do. We are finally getting some rain which will set things alight again for a bit. I look out the windows of the prison and see…yellow weeds! mostly dandelions available to view from a distance, but I know if I get out on my knee scooter and have a brief, closer look, I’ll see the buttercups too, and various other weeds, mostly with yellow flowers. What is it about weeds and their propensity for yellowness?

I guess in truth they come in all colours, the dreaded blue of periwinkle, the orange of scarlet pimpernell and the terrible creamy green of carrot weed. They’re all having a ball at my place this month! But hey! they say one man’s weeds are another man’s flowers and in general (possibly with the exception of bind weed) they don’t really damage the chosen plants in the short run, so I’m going to chill out about them. Haha. Yeah right.

The open days are over for the Spring and won’t be resumed till I’m frisky enough to get rid of that other man’s meat (or flowers) ie the weeds. Am I rambling? I think I am, must be the forced confinement getting to me…

I must say I’m not sad to be missing the crazy time of year that is the Christmas Rush. No parties or shopping for me!

Back to roses. The once flowerers are mostly finishing up now, but the early repeaters are already in second flush and the never stoppers are producing some lovely blooms.(heresay)

We have amalgamated the nursery into blobs instead of rows for easy watering, hopefully soon by a semi invalid. Tonight God is doing the job for us.

Some kind person has delivered a row of pots from the nursery which contain recent rose seedlings dug up from the garden for me to peruse minutely. We dig them up and put them in pots for 2 reasons…1/ when they start making flowers its easier not to miss the event and 2/ as they tend to seed themselves on paths, I am likely to spray them with round up!

Though in actual fact they will thrive more if left where they decided to hatch, as is the way with most seedlings…segue into passionfruit vine which chose to grow by the chalet between a row of iceberg standard roses last year. Currently it has swallowed several of the roses and about 1 quarter of the building so far. Last summer, in its first season it produced around 3-400 fruit. It continued to flower and make fruit through the winter and is currently laden with an unspecified quantity, with the winter fruit ripening slowly. Oner happy seedling!

Back to the seedling roses on my verandah.. We have a couple of likely looking candidates this season. One small plant has grown 1 only very large bud in lilac pink with a pearly sheen to it. Opened into a lovely full flower with many slightly crumpled tissuey petals and the light outside to darker in the middle scenario , a common theme of the David Austin roses. Scent, elusive Damask. Time will tell if its good enough to “publish” and propagate.

Anyway, enough rambling…we have had 22 lovely mils of rain in the last 48 hours, enough to make all my neglected roses and perennials happy for days! I better be off to waste some more time doing nothing of any use to anyone…

Open day Sunday 1st Dec.

Still plenty coming on in the nursery and lots of new roses for sale too.

Ah November! How could I have intimated last month October could be better? How could the promise of things to come be better than the coming!!

These early weeks in November are truly the jewel in the garden’s crown. The early Spring flowering roses and perennials are still about and the main flush of nearly everything is upon us. Roses of course…they are upon us! The true old fashioneds, Ramblers  and Species are just starting, whilst the repeat flowerers, including most of the Austins are going hard out. (excepting the ones I sprayed with a dilute tank of Round Up which are still looking rather sad, but pulling through)

We experienced, along with the rest of the country I think, a crazy heat wave last week. Over 30 deg in places at times . More like February than November. The roses of course, thought it was great, but some of the Spring perennials felt very uncomfortable. Not to mention the Spring foals. As newborns  spend a lot of time lying down with no breeze to cool them, they were rather hot and sweaty, poor babes!

Anyway, it’s not the first time we’ve been begging for rain in November, but the last few seasons have been rather the opposite scenario. One realises how quickly one can become accustomed to something and believe it to be the norm!

So November marches on, with parts of the country getting plenty of rain, whilst others, like us, getting hardly any. Enough to keep up the wonderful Spring growth, but certainly not enough to guard the garden against the approaching heat of Summer. But there’s time yet to worry about that…

October heralds the start of the real Spring glory. November is probably the “Highlight” month, but somehow the promise is even more exciting…every day more perennials pop up, inevitably some from under or very close to something else which has been poked in while it was dormant! I’m sure none of you are this disorganized and probably mark spots when they are going down… I, however, always think the same…”I’ll remember that was there” !

Then there’s the building of the roses…small winter leaves give way to big spring ones which start to produce the buds. I get the feeling the roses are going to be a bit ahead of schedule this season, but then I think I think that most years!

The Spring Open days so far have been popular with plenty of punters, now the roses are poised we are working towards the November ones ,which should attract people wanting to enjoy the roses doing their Spring Fling.

The Irises are also looking extra good this season, the Bearded are opening already and the Louisianas and Japanese/Siberians are racing along and not far behind. Then there’s the Salvias and all the multitude of interesting perennials getting ready to show off.

One of the main interests in our garden is the David Austin collection, which contains most of the early Austins which were all imported from England by the late Great Trevor Griffiths. These were introduced from 1961 to 1995. After that date an ever increasing amount have been introduced annually, but only a small proportion have ever been brought into NZ. This ramble is leading up to a rather sad anecdote concerning this aforementioned collection…

The eternal problem of predators in a country garden continues. Winter heralded  a small plague of rabbits (the hoped for new strain of calici virus hasn’t appeared here yet) and the smaller Austins along the front of the gardens took rather a hammering. Enter Head Gardener Hamilton with back pack on board, filled with fungicide and marine Nitrosol, guaranteed to deter herbivorous vermin. Without a care in the world, but quite a lot of pain in the back, she drenches the struggling front rowers, and having noticed some spotty leaves in the nursery, she gives those a boost too.

Nek minute she notices the fungicide sprayer in the shed. She has sprayed the lot with the herbicide sprayer.

SHE IS FIRED!!!!!!!!

This is a very sad story, hopefully the ending will be less sad….they seem to be pulling through. But if you happen to be coming to see the roses next month you’ll probably be able to spot the ones I’m talking about…

As one who failed abysmally on their winter clean-up, it has now become a frenetic Spring clean in time for the first open day. As my daughter said , the good thing about open days is it forces you to tidy the garden up…

As I mentioned in a former post, a bad mulching choice and an unnaturally mild winter turned the “quiet time” in the garden into a very noisy weed party. And since I suddenly realised Spring Open Days were not a thing of the distant future, but events looming, it has basically rained and winded A LOT making the Spring cleaning quite unpleasant!

Most of the gardens are now officially water logged, making me worry a bit about the bare root roses I planted in the border a month ago. I’m thinking I may have to go and scoop them out of the morass and put them in pots for the meantime. Whilst established roses amaze me with how they put up with being under water for a month or two , a bare root rose is a different matter and may expire.

So just days till the first Open Day…if you’re going to make it, please excuse the messy parts of the garden, I’m not going to make it around everywhere in the time left to me and prefer to do some parts well than it all haphazardly! Following September 15th, we will be having another a month later on October 13th and as “real rose time” hits there will be 3;  Sunday November 3rd, Saturday November 16th and Sunday December 1st.

Obviously September is too early for full rose appreciation, however the early species roses are in full swing and there are lots of lovely flowering tree and shrubs as well as many spring bulbs to enjoy. The early perennials are starting to show as well, not to mention some later ones that actually never stopped all winter…

It appears I failed to publish this blog at time of writing, oops. In the meantime the weather has seriously come right and the first Open Day has been and gone. Trade was brisk, the weather was kind and lots of people came and wandered around the awakening gardens. In the week since the roses have moved into overdrive and are leafing and budding up fast. It’s such an exciting time of year!

Next Open Day in 3 weeks on October 13th and I really think there will be some early roses blooming in the garden by then.

Poohs. The weather has been very disappointing of late, we’re all pretty over the rain. I know I shouldn’t be complaining after so much mild and sunny winter weather, but somehow it seems even worse when you’ve got used to unnaturally good weather…

Unfortunately the mild and sunny June and July we had caused all the plants and weeds to think it was either still Autumn, or Spring already (not sure which) and they’ve just kept moving on full steam ahead. A poor mulch decision has added to the problem big time. We bought 40 square metres of pine mulch which was spread with many steps and wheelbarrows (and some mini tractor loads) around our gardens as we did the autumn clean up and planted things to fill the gaps. Sadly the mulch had been sitting in its mountain for too long and basically turned into soil conditioner rather than mulch. Instead of suppressing the weeds it gave them great happiness!

So long story short, we now have a new load of mulch to spread over the existing mulch, but there’s mammoth weeding to do in between. Most of the new plants and roses we surrounded with said mulch are out of sight! hidden by giant sow thistles and buttercups (and many other varieties of “wildflower”)

With the arrival of August has come more typical upper North Island weather, with rain of some sort pretty much every day. Lots of thunder storms, wind, the odd bit of hail and basically squall, squall, squall..

In other news, the nursery is humming along, nearly ready for our first Spring Open Day on September 15th. Hoping the garden will be coming into its own , this will involve a lot more weed pulling and mulching, hopefully some man power will materialise very soon to help me with the herculean task! The roses and perennials are coming on well and the bulbs are really going for it.

Whilst on the subject of weeding, its interesting talking to people about their favourite methods and tools. I’m a get down on the ground on knees or butt and use a sharp hand tool sort of girl… Extremely arthritic ankles mean getting off them keeps me in the garden for longer. However arthritic fingers have led me to my tool of choice, which is a Barnett lettuce cutting knife. Cost, around $10 or less, so you can afford to have them dotted around the garden. They weigh just a few grams, yet seem to be very strong. A slightly curved serrated blade is custom made for slipping beneath the surface and slicing through buttercup roots. Buttercup is the bane of my life in most of the garden. We have a lot of it on the farm from whence the garden was born. Once every year or 2 we shout ourselves to a helicopter to hit the broadleaf weeds on the farm, but as roses and perennials come under this category the helicopter is not allowed within cooee of the garden. Therefore its on your knees with a lettuce cutter!!! Those renunculae just love twisting themselves inside rose roots, so there’s nothing for it than to dive under the giant vicious roses and hope for the best!

More amazing uses for what I have come to look on as the perfect garden handtool are as follows…you can trim odd arms off perennials and roses as you crawl, with a pull and slice, to make a cutting or tidy things up…dead arms on roses can be lopped off, even pretty fat ones, if you saw a fault in it and then snap (can’t cut off big live arms though)…small pieces can be sawed off perennials and transplanted nearby, it will dig an ample small hole… furrows can be dug for planting seeds direct in the garden…and last but not least its even good for harvesting vegetables…including lettuces!

So there you go , a bargain find at Horticentre, I highly recommend for oldish decrepit ground gardeners!

I must away and don my wet weather gear for some more ground weeding, roll on Spring and hopefully some fine weather!

Winter, it’s really here now as it’s past mid July, but a lot of the plants just don’t seem to know the date…some still feel it must be Autumn, now it’s finally rained a lot and it’s a bit colder. So the Salvias for the most part are still flowering away merrily, even those which go completely dormant in Winter! The Bearded Irises which usually repeat in Autumn ( I have about half a dozen repeaters) didn’t manage a second go this year, it was too dry even for Irises…but now, one by one, they’re making mid-Winter blooms!  So along with the dianthus carrying on as they do and the roses still producing blooms, the garden does not look like a winter scene.

I’m still busy making cuttings most days, and this morning I went over to Banksia Lutea to collect some wood, as all the Autumn cuttings died. Lo and behold, she was covered in bunches of buds, many already open! The enormous Laevigata left behind in the chook run at Weiti was also sporting many blooms last week. That’s what I call really early Spring flowering!

Following another NE rain event scheduled for tomorrow there’s a wonderful long anti cyclone hovering in the wings for all of next week. I’m really hoping temperatures drop more than predicted and we can get a nice week of frosts to kill some bugs and fungi or we’re going to have a bad season next year.

So Winter tasks continue, with the added burden of having to continue with things that shouldn’t be tasks at this time of year…the lawns are still needing mowing weekly or close to it, the weeds are still sprouting and growing like crazy Spring weeds! Many more roses than usual are still having flowers, mostly just odd blooms, but the real grafters are still producing a show. Mary Rose is always one in this category. She out does the Chinas on continuity. She was introduced by the late David Austin in 1983 and to my mind, 36 years later hasn’t been surpassed. Sure there are much fancier flowers with much stronger scents and better shaped bushes, but when it comes to producing attractive foliage and flowers all through the year, she scores extremely highly in my books.

Some of our own homebred roses are pleasing in their non stop production of flowers also. Weiti Sherry is a Mutabilis cross and one can usually find a bloom or bunch on her in any month of the year. Like many of the Tea roses, her winter blooms can be quite unrecognisable colour wise. In Winter there’s no sign of pink In Sherry…

Another new girl on the block is Weiti Michele. She is obviously of Hybrid Musk origin and makes a large arching shrub with pleasingly few thorns. She is now getting more established in her new spot in my garden and this season is continuing to flower through the Autumn and now into Winter. Her sweet musk scent is so welcome on a foggy cold Winter morning!

Onward and upward…the sun has risen I believe as it’s now light outside so I must get outside to inspect the garden. The Spring bulbs are appearing with their cheerful faces, daffodils and erlicheer along with the first of the dutch irises. It will be interesting to see how the season unfolds and whether the confused flowers will come again at their “right” time