For the love of Roses

3 Oct

Making rose petal perfume is one my earliest flower memories. My mother had a yellow rose bush in the garden and the rule for perfume making including strict instructions to only use the wind fallen petals. Of course the minute she turned her back I’d pick a few petals from the flowering roses as well! The scent of roses is so powerful and transformative. The first flower my husband ever gave me was a yellow rose which I still have as I pressed between the pages of a book.

Photo credit Una O’Connor Photography. Photo in my polytunnel in July

In my first garden in Kildare, I planted a rose bush but I lived in fear of doing the wrong thing to it, so it stayed in the corner of the front garden and never received a prune or as much as a rose cut from it!

In my current garden, I still had the fear that roses were too complicated or too hard to grow so I didn’t plant any! There is a few wild roses growing in our native hedgerow, a dog rose or Rosa canina, both pink and white. But no fancy hybrid teas or David Austins! The lure of the gorgeous images of roses and then incredible display in Altamont Gardens, Carlow, encouraged me to face my fear. They have two very long rows of roses, of every type and colour and scent. From there and from books I made a list and then ordered a few from David Austin as bareroot in October 2019.

The bare-roots arrived in the post in November and I potted them into large pots and they stayed in the greenhouse over winter. I could have planted them then and there but I had no idea where I would plant them and had no soil prepared. Spring came and I selected an area, running along an existing boxy hedgerow. At this stage I’d gather a few more roses, a few more bare-root and a couple of hybrid teas that I chose for colour. Following the planting instructions I planted them out, mulched around them and waited for the first blooms.

The first buds arrived and didn’t develop into blooms. The greenfly had arrived and a natural solution, the ladybirds, were busy at the far side of the garden. I used an organic and natural garlic spray which did the trick and I found as the summer progressed there was less and less signs of aphids.