roses

I think I've caught the rose bug. I've become fascinated with the way they can carry so much history, last so long. One example which influenced me: Last week my cousin Mary (81) and I took some flowers to her husband's grave. First she took me round her garden and talked to me about the history of each rose. I don't know the name of one particularly lovely pink rose but I remember the story. That rose grew from a cutting made in 1948 when they moved to that house as newly marrieds. The cutting came from her husband's parents' garden. She has the studio photo taken of her husband and his brother just before they went away to serve in World War Two. Lou and his brother are wearing buds of this rose in their lapels in the photo. A rose from that plant went to the graveside last week.

This may seem maudlin to some but it's the kind of linkage I adore.

I've been reading Gardening with Old Roses from the library and in the section on companion planting (for visual harmony rather than the permaculture interpretation of companion planting) I was interested to read that herbs are often very good partners for old fashioned roses. Many of the herbs Rosmemary Thodey writes about are familiar names to me from the packet of my beneficial insect blend and elsewhere in the herb section of the Kings Seeds catalogue: Daucus Carota, Amni Visnaga, Hyssop, Rue, Feverfew, Viola Miss Helen Mount.

I have some roses out the front of the house - the only part of the section to have any garden flowers in it when we bought the house. These roses have, I suspect, survived years of neglect and I won't be messing with moving them. I have learnt from my recent reading that two of the three are ramblers - they send out shoots all over the place from the base. They are in a very narrow piece of garden which can't be widened - well not unless we relocate the garage. I was thinking that we need trellis for them as I can't attach them to the brick walls. Instead, I've set myself the challenge of finding something to train them over to give some shape to the sprawl (and prevent the sprawl from being squashed by the car tyres) without buying anything new.

It's true - this blog is in desperate need of photos to give some context to the text. I really need to remedy the knowledge gap and learn to download photos myself. Soon, I hope.