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

Pierre de Ronsard (Eden rose) weeping standard

It’s rolled around into autumn and finally the end of the heat here in Perth and I still have one last post to go using photos I took last spring.

This is my Pierre de Ronsard (or Eden rose as it’s called in some parts) weeping standard.

I bought this from Roworths nursery in Landsdale. 

They have this cracker example in their carpark. This photo was taken around January or February I think, so blooms aren’t all that prolific, but the shape of it had me pulling my wallet out and asking ‘how much?’

Pierre de Ronsard is one of those rose varieties that take a few years to mature into a prolific bloomer. The maturity of it when I bought it meant that I only had to wait a couple of years for its flowering season to extend through to autumn. Up until then it didn’t flower past Australia Day (at the end of January).

This year it is starting to take on a good form as well.

In sadder news, however, the tally of deaths at the end of this summer is 5. I bought a couple of fuchsias (love them) last spring that didn’t make it; lost a couple of natives (a grevillea and a dwarf tea tree) possibly from old age - I hear some of them are short-lived; and my silver birch which is very sad.

One of the first trees I planted, after 8 summers it has passed away… now I’ve got to decide if I can do something with that lovely trunk or remove it and start from scratch.

Ahhh gardening. It has its ups and downs. Best wishes for yours.

This is Lamarque

Have a look at the beautiful Old Garden rose, Lamarque.

This is a Noisette rose bred by Marechal in France in 1830. If you would like to delve further into the story of Noisette roses have a look at this article. Go on –it’s interesting.

Lamarque has white blooms with a pale lemon yellow centre and mine is moderately fragrant.

The flowers are produced from spring through to late autumn in heavy clusters, producing a spectacular display.

It’s a large climber that can apparently grow to 6 metres. Mine is a weeping standard which I bought from Roworths Rose Nursery (this is not a sponsored post by the way). Luckily for me it doesn’t mind a prune. I give it a light prune in early autumn and when the canes start attacking me as I walk past, along with a harder prune in winter.

You can see in the photo how it looks at the end of autumn and, below, how it looks at this time of year, post prune.

Last year I pruned it much harder, almost back to the support ring, and I wasn’t that thrilled with the result. It was still large by the end of autumn, but it took quite a while to get to an attractive size and shape and the spring blooms weren’t as prolific, probably because there was less plant for them to grow on.

Apparently this isn’t always the case with Noisettes. My Gardening Neighbour has several and he has pruned them with unfortunate results – a very slow recovery. Certainly my rose book recommends not pruning Madame Alfred Carriere, another of the Noisettes.

I decided to buy a weeping standard for this spot based on this photo in the coffee table book, Rural Australian Gardens. The book doesn’t say what rose appears in the photo but I later found an earlier photo of the same property in another rose book I borrowed from the library; apparently it is a rambler I had never heard of – Minnehaha.

So when I went along to the nursery I had this image in my mind, with either pink or white flowers. On site the choices were either Iceberg or Lamarque and the ever helpful staff recommended this one. It hasn’t let me down.

Thanks for reading. Happy Gardening!

Hello Roses!

Here in Perth we’re in the middle of the first rose flush of spring, and this year we are having a good season.

Red Pierre looking truly spectacular

So often it can be spoiled by wet or too cool weather, but not this year.

David Austin’s ‘Munstead Wood’

This year the warm weather at the end of winter has meant that most of the roses are looking well foliaged for a change.

Named for the ballerina, David Austin’s ‘Darcey Bussell’

Hybrid tea, ‘Bonfire’. The petals turn red in the sunshine as it ages

This is hybrid tea, ‘Granada’

You might remember, back in autumn, I was talking about moving my ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’ rose. Well here it is in its new home and flowering much better already.

This one is hybrid tea, ‘Radox Bouquet’

The thorny, but beautiful ‘Gertrude Jekyll’

And finally, another Austin rose, Scepter’d Isle.

More Autumn Roses

Here are some more of my autumn roses.

 

This is David Austin’s Princess Alexandra of Kent. It’s fairly new in my garden – only a couple of summer’s old. This rose flowers fairly infrequently in this spot. I have another one in a less harsh position which does slightly better and I am going to shift this plant near it.

 

 

And because it’s such a treat to see it in flower, this is a shot of the back with the bud of hybrid tea, Fragrant Plum.

 

And it’s very lovely bud.

 

This pop of colour was irresistible – a Pat Austin bud against the dark blue fence.

 

And the heavy droop of a fully open flower.

 

This is David Austin rose, Young Lycidas. It starts as a dark bruise…

 

And gradually fills with petals and fades through the red plum tones.

 

This is hybrid musk, Felicia. I planted this as a weeping standard last spring to provide a bit of shade over a scorched lawn area. I bought it from Roworths rose nursery in Landsdale. The guy there estimated it as being 5 years old and warned me not to expect much in the way of flowering. I had low expectations but, in a classic case of under-promise and over-deliver, it has flowered continuously all season. I don’t expect it to ‘weep’ as such, being more of a spreading shrub than climber.

 

And this beauty is English rose, Pretty Jessica.

My Most Photogenic Roses

Today, while I’m waiting for the weather to finally cool off and autumn to kick in, I’m going to show you some of my most eye-catching roses.

 From the breeders of Pierre de Ronsard (Eden) rose, this is Red Pierre.

This is Julia’s Rose. Those colours, those stamens…

The beautiful English rose, Belle Story. I’m a sucker for exposed stamens.

 And this one is prolific old garden climber, Lamarque.

And last but not least. These are the autumn colours of David Austin rose, Jubilee Celebration.