June heralds the start of Winter, although in my view it’s mostly Autumn really until the 21st and the Winter Solstice and then its really Winter. The recent flooding rains in the South are clearly their, be it slightly behind schedule, Autumn rains. Poor farmers, and I’m sure plenty of gardens copped it too. In places down there they’ll now miss out on any growth for winter as temperatures will get too cold and the days too short to get the grass/ plants growing. We are lucky to be in a more hospitable neck of the woods and are experiencing strong growth all over.
The thing about Winter in our Temperate part of the world, is that it’s really pretty quick. Whilst it may seem like endless weeks of cold slogging, it’s really just a couple of months and by late August Spring is definitely on the horizon….so FREAK OUT!!! It’s nearly Spring and my list of “Winter Jobs” fills books! My main aim at the moment is to get as many cuttings in as possible. Hosting Open Days is super fun, but dominates work schedules and thus pushes other ventures down the list. This is why we decided not to have any Open days after April, so we could attack the Winter List…
Top of the Winter List was get rid of the Camphor Laurel and make a bigger garden there. This has been achieved pretty much and the naming rocks have been laid in place ready for the arrival of multitudes of new roses from Tasman Bay. A lot of these are Hybrid Perpetuals which are an interesting class of rose “invented” in the late 19th Century-early 20th. Some of them really do repeat all season, whilst others manage an Autumn flush. But compared to the Once flowerers they came from, they are “perpetual” flowerers.
It is a rather tricky class of rose which requires 2 things in abundance…space and food! A lot of them grow straight up to 2m+ with strong basal growth, and left to their own devices will just position the flowers on the top of the flag pole! In the old days when they were born, gardens were very big (well the ones owned by people who could afford to grow HP roses!) and gardeners were cheap! The roses were pegged down in a giant circle around the base so the flower stems broke out all along the arching arms. Pegging down is a grand way to showcase tall stiff roses. “Gracefully arching” roses are a David Austin specialty and I learnt early on to be prepared for very big roses if this description was used in his books…gracefully arching is like Nature’s pegging down…back to the HPs…I don’t have room in my garden to peg many roses as each one then uses about 3-4m square of space. An alternative is espalier them on a fence of some sort and they will then give multitudes of flowers along the stems, this is why I have lots of gates in my gardens…
Par for the course the month has got away on me, winter is definitely in the building and the Winter Solstice has been and gone. We’ve had much rain and drear, but are currently enjoying some perfect winter days. Despite having been an iPhone owner for many weeks, I haven’t played with it at all so still using second hand photos here …