What have you done in the garden today? Part 3

[ThreeRingCircus]

The old thread was filling up so I've created a new one!

Link to old thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/gardening/4823202-what-have-you-done-in-the-garden-today-part-2?reply=128367673

I adore roses but like to see them mixed in with other things. We went to a supposedly famous rose garden in Canada once. Totally joyless. It might have been the 10000 other people there that put me off though.

I think that’s why, if the books and magazines had suggested roses, I’d have been unenthusiastic - too many memories of monoculture rose gardens with, at best, rows of marigolds underneath.

I have a very selfish attitude to garden visiting. I love to go, but am grumpy when thousands of other people have had the same idea and spoil my view.

My roses have everything growing under them.
Mostly because it's not a big garden and I'm not wasting space keeping an exclusion zone around them.
The most vigorous one is quite mature but has never been fed and spends the summer competing with tulips and lady's mantle (alchemilla mollis).
The others jostle with loosestrife and lavender, and there's a climbing rose in the back that just will not give up despite being half under rocks and in the darkest bit of the garden.
Diva plants are not for me, I like things that thrive on benign neglect.

I love roses and bought loads of DA ones

I I am really into specific shades and adore tomato ish red with pale pinks, blush and off white

No yellow

There’s one shade I want to find in the orange / tomatoey colour and only one solid pink I kind of don’t like so much

They are throughout the garden with other plants and I take time in their leaves do they look fresh

Someone gave me a rose cutting they had grown. I was full of praise for their advanced gardening skills until she confessed that she just stuck the odd pruning or three into a pot of soil and waited to see if any of them took. So I did it with an old un named rose that had sentimental value and it worked!

That’s pretty much what I did. I’d been pruning Buff Beauty and, on a whim, decided to have a go, rather than just putting the prunings into the green waste. I made about five cuttings, but only one took.

Rose cuttings ! I’ve always wanted to, but was confused because they are usually sold as grafted plants, and I thought it was the rootstock that determined the size? I love roses, I have loads, and they have really helped to break up my heavy clay soil. My only regrets were the 6 Boule de Neige I put in. They seem disease prone and spindly. The David Austin’s are a joy. I love yellow roses. I put 4 into 1 bed, chose open flowers in that bed as I know they are better for wildlife, altho the birds feast on aphids and hips from all of them. Best doer in my garden is definitely the Generous Gardener. I had a Buff Beaty in my last garden and she was a big girl, and very beautiful for 3 weeks. I prefer repeat flowers. I did love her though. Wouldn’t mind a cutting if anyones close to the East Midlands and has a spare. No monoculture here, i have geraniums, miscanthus, heuchera, and kind of fake meadow with prairie perennials, natives and self seeded dahlias. Shouldn’t work , but does.

Yes, as it’s not grafted it may turn out to be a different creature. We shall see.

Maybe it’s not Buff Beauty that I have then as it flowered from May to late November!

I think odds of one out of five to get a new rose tree is a pretty decent return for a pot of compost!

It’s not bad, I suppose, although the test will be whether it survives in open ground!

I really ought to try taking some cuttings, it never occurs to me.

I've done very little over the past 2 days. It hasn't stopped raining and the garden has a couple of inches of water sitting on top of it.

I've watered some seeds I've got in the polytunnel and that's about it.

I’ve got a very poor track records with seeds and cuttings, but being at home so much more during Covid showed me that one important element is daily (or, at least, regular) attention. A lot of my seedlings used to die because I forgot about them. I now aspire to be a queen of propagation, like Carol Klein.

We visited York Gate before the Gardeners Benevolent Fund took over. Just me, DH and another couple being shown round by the owner. If it hadn’t been for the other couple, it would have been perfect

I’ve always wanted to, but was confused because they are usually sold as grafted plants, and I thought it was the rootstock that determined the size? Not in roses, there isn’t much variety in rootstock or rootstock size. They’re not grown from seed because you want a bush that’s genetically identical to its parent, and grafting is quicker than cuttings for getting to a bush of sellable size.

For apple and other fruit trees, quick propagation of a tree identical to its parent is still importation, but the development of rootstocks that will keep the tree to a manageable size comes into prominence.

When we moved here, the front garden was a lawn, with a border of HT and shrub roses along the front, and tarmac path straight up the middle. So we got rid of the path and the grass, and set to planting to our taste, confident the roses would in due course give up the ghost. And so they have, with the exception of two dark red floribundas which flower from early summer through to the autumn frosts.

The last garden we visited left me raging because the roses were so badly pruned and pretty well all of them were a mass of woody stubs and die-back. The state of them made me wince and if I hadn't pulled a muscle in my back that morning I'd have been tempted to go back to the car for my secateurs.

Re propagation 'Pay attention' is the main rule. Give them a good staring at once a day, adjusting water/light and they should be fine.

Exactly! I used to fail on the daily staring until covid intervened.

I'm no good at deliberately propagating cuttings but seem to get rose seedlings all over the garden. I've just been digging them up and giving them away to my local scout camp to use as hedging so I don't actually know what kind of roses they are. I didn't know they self seeded, perhaps only the older varieties do.

Are they species roses? My Rosa glauca sometimes produces seedlings.

No idea, I haven't seen the flowers. I assume the back garden ones are from the pink rambler that has roots under the patio we can't dig out.
The front garden ones can't be that type though, they're a couple of years old and about a foot tall.

Did any of your roses do really well last year when we had all that rain? My Amazing Day rose bloomed at its very best after 4 years since it was originally planted. I've got a Rhapsody in Blue but it's never done that well as it's usually overshadowed by taller plants. May have to move it to a pot as the garden is already bursting at the seams. (I know roses don't do that well in pots, but I have no choice, sadly.)

None of mine did well after the rainy we had apart from the one I think is Buff Beauty. This is it - now I’m not sure because of the repeat flowering so it could well be something completely different, would be glad of an id if that’s the case.

That's lovely and it looks like the Buff Beauty on the David Austin website but it doesn't look like the BB I had ages ago. Its flowers were lovely too - less yellow - more pale, dull, orange and they had a weak neck so drooped a little, annoyingly. Interesting...

My Buff Beauty was a floribunda, I think, and they were also weak necked. I have a rose in my garden very like the putative Buff Beauty, but can’t remember it’s name. Very glad for the grafting info, Im going to stick a few cuttings into a seed bed even though I also have a high failure rate with cuttings and seeds. Feeling slightly ashamed now that there’s some die back and dead bits on some of my roses. So confused because I’m always reading that yo7 can practically use hedge trimmers and still get good results. Do I need to sharpen and sterilise my Felcos?

Rosa rugosa is a profligate self seeder. Rugose, ie crinkled, leaves, big, usually single, dark pink or white flowers, big hips. Rosa glauca (red stems and gloucous grey leaves) also self seeds, as do a lot of the natives.

perhaps only the older varieties do in general,, double flowers don’t, because sexual parts have been changed into petals.