A Spring Quickie

Here’s a few quick shots of some roses that I have taken over the last week or so.

This one is Gertrude Jekyll which I have growing as a climber along the fence. It isn’t a prolific flowerer at other times of the year but it puts on a great show in spring.

It’s being a little swamped this year by Heritage, also grown as a climber next to it. That’s probably my fault since I tend to favour the Heritage over the Gertrude Jekyll when I’m pruning since GJ is so incredibly thorny. I will have to let it go a little more.

And finally a shot of Abraham Darby. This rose is taking a long time to grow for me but it is beautiful and superbly fragrant. I do what I can to encourage it – maybe it’s the spot, maybe it’s that particular plant.

Happy gardening!

Ahhhhh - Spring!

The leaves are fresh and green, the skies are deep blue and the temperatures are, for the most part, very reasonable. I’ve been lucky enough to have had the last couple of weeks off work to potter around the house – it’s been great!

The first week was all about spring blossom as all the peach and nectarine trees were out.

The bottle brush was out as well. I have three cream trees down the western side of the house.

Then some of the roses started blooming.

Pat Austin

              

Skylark

Kathleen Harrop

And Seduction. This is my climbing one – after 4 years it still hasn’t got as big as a shrub of a similar age.

I spent part of the time building a couple of slightly dodgy structures to support my weeping standard roses.

Here’s one for the Lamarque.

I have my fingers crossed but it’s already leaning heavily towards the north with the back feet lifting. Time will tell, but I am making back up plans.

The other one is for the Red Pierre. I have a lot more confidence in this one.

Happy Spring!

Sue

GBB Day Number 1

Hello and welcome to my garden blog if you’re new here. Please feel free to have a look around. In Australia it’s winter and finally the weather has cooled down (like right down to nearly freezing in the morning) here in Perth. We still haven’t had much rain but we have two desalination plants and are now pumping recycled water back into the aquifers to boost supplies so we’re a little less reliant on rainfall nowadays. It doesn’t help the native forests though and we lose a few more trees every year to dry winters.

Anyway, enough of my rainfall anxiety and on to what I want to show you from my garden…

This time round I’ve got a few more photos of the last of the roses. First up there’s this, the most perfect ‘Moonbeam’ bloom ever! Being right next to the front gate it’s something I see on a daily basis, so I didn’t miss its single day of perfection.

The Lamarque put on a stunning display with a final flush of blooms. I absolutely adore this rose. The pole I have supporting the stem has been developing a lean over this last season and I have been slightly panicked that the whole thing’s going to topple and crash to the ground in the next storm so I have pruned it hard and I have a plan to build a support for it that will hopefully take the weight of the top.

And my final bloom for the day is this lovely Pat Austin.

I’m linking up with Garden Bloggers Bloom Day at May Dreams Gardens

Enjoy your gardening

The end of Autumn

Lamarque

Depending on how you count these things we are either at the start of winter now or coming to the end of autumn.

The Crimson Glory Vine has great autumn colours even in Perth

And it’s been a warm dry autumn here in Perth with the temperatures only now starting to drop, along with the leaves.

I can’t rave enough about the performance of Duchesse de Brabant

I got my camera out and have taken some photos of what’s in bloom around the garden.

A Darcey Bussel bud starts to open

With the warmth the roses are still blooming well

My Camellia in flower

William Shakespeare

Iceberg with a few hips

Young Lycidas, still only a young plant, is putting on a good display

Bold seduction

Sharifa Asma

My new rose, St Cecilia

The truly gorgeous Abraham Darby

Floribunda Bridal Pink in bud

And full flower

And that’s it – happy gardening!

Belle story

I took a trip up to Melville Rose Nursery near Kalamunda in the Perth hills at the end of last week. I had a couple more David Austin roses I wanted to pick up – a St Cecilia (after seeing them in an Open garden at the end of last year) and William Morris. The William Morris is my best guess at what the rose growing against the shed back in this post is, which I absolutely love. They look like they should be good performers – they were covered in buds. The St Cecilia is very fragrant as well which is a huge bonus.

Darcey Bussel

Here are some photos I took up there. Not all of the roses were labelled, so I haven’t identified them all.

Jude the Obscure

The Yeoman

Moonbeam

Francine Austin

And the rest are unknown

Happy Gardening!

Meet my new roses

Here it is, the start of a new year and with it the start of some really hot weather here in Perth and around the country. Temperatures have passed the 40°mark (that’s close to 110°F – whew!) and leaves and any flowers are well scorched. Luckily, at least in blogging terms, I still have some photos from spring to show you. So without further ado… come and see my new roses for this season.

The first one is Lavender Pinocchio. Look at those beautiful smoky tones and exposed stamens.

The flowers fade to pink with age. A floribunda rose, this rose has already been a good performer, flowering fairly continuously since spring.

The next one is a rose I bought which was mislabelled. I actually wanted to buy another Belle Story so I was disappointed, however it’s been a strong grower and put on a heavy flush of flowers in spring.

I’m thinking it has to be an English rose. Could it be Lilian Austin?

This is hybrid tea, Atomic Blonde. It has only put on this one flower this season.

This is the second time I have planted a Jude the Obscure, this time in a much milder position. It looks like a much stronger plant and has put on a decent number of blooms.

I created a new garden bed especially to add the next two roses. After reading my neighbour’s guest post I had to have Moonbeam and it has proved to be quite a prolific flowerer, with two good flushes so far.

And I also bought Martine Guillot (a name I absolutely massacre every time I say it). 

This rose has been on my wish list since seeing it in an Australian House and Garden magazine a couple of years ago. 

It seems to be growing strongly but has only had one flush of flowers.

Apart from that, I also bought a climbing Duchesse de Brabant and some other repeat favourites.

Happy Gardening!

Open Gardens in Adelaide part 1

I’ve just come back from a holiday in my home town of Adelaide in South Australia. While I was there we visited two gardens that were participating in the Open Gardens Scheme, a scheme where private gardens are opened to the public for one or two days on a weekend for a small charge and money raised goes to their favourite charity and to keep the scheme going (when I was doing research into this I discovered that Open Gardens Australia is calling it quits at the end of this spring–autumn season so get out there now while you can). The information that was on the website about these gardens has now been taken down so I can’t confidently tell you more than that they were both in the Adelaide hills area.

These photos were taken at the first place we visited– a small farm with a few grapevines and horses.

They had some sculpture on sale and these were dotted about the garden;

a topiary bed, including a holly bush;

hedges between the sheds;

weeping trees – a silver birch on the right and mulberry on the left;

and roses and flowers everywhere

Happy Gardening

Sue