Roses – beautiful blooms woven with scent and meaning and worthy of a place in any garden. The garden here is graced with a bundle of roses, most threaded among the perennials, others clambering on sheds. David Austin roses are my favourites, the big blousy flowers are romantic and luscious, and as beautiful in decline as in full glory.
Roses though have gained a largely unfair reputation as the finickity, neurotic and spoiled children of the plant world. There is much talk about the dos and don’ts of rose growing, enough to put the beginner gardener into a sweat, scared to pick up the secateurs for fear of snipping at the wrong angle.
I gave up on fussing over my roses long ago, pruning my care routine back to a few basics and waiting to see the results of my neglect. There have been few tantrums from the roses, they’ve stoically gone about their business blooming their happy socks off, and any that have really objected to the system have been removed and replaced with a more agreeable plant.
Roses are tougher than given credit for, very forgiving, and I find them nowhere near as hungry and thirsty as often thought. Our roses have survived the drought with barely a drop of water or a hint of wilting, while still sharing with us their beautiful flowers, perhaps a little smaller than usual but lovely nonetheless.
Roses are often associated with fungal disease, a problem we rarely have in this garden, controlled with simple practices meaning we can leave the chemicals alone:
- Water little but deeply, only when really needed. Roses are far more dry hardy than given credit and hate wet feet. Too much moisture increases the risk of fungal disease.
- Don’t water overhead, water at soil level instead and preferably beneath the mulch. This helps to reduce humidity and keeps foliage dry. If you must water overhead, do so in the morning to allow foliage to dry through the warmth of the day.
- Treat your roses to a foliar spray of an organic seaweed solution every now and again. I find it helps keep foliage healthy and fungal disease at bay.
- Ensure some air flow around your roses. In our perennial beds I try to keep a little space around each plant to reduce trapped humidity. I also select roses that are happy in a bedding environment. There are no hybrid teas here, I’m not so keen on their rigid forms and they are less happy in a communal situation!
- Select cultivars that are resistant to fungal disease. Most rose growers will state disease resistance in cultivar notes.
- Keep them well mulched to reduce the need to water, while also keeping the mulch clear of the base of the plant.
- If I have a particularly sick or underperforming rose it’s whipped out of the garden and replaced with a more hardy specimen. A sickly rose with a tendency to attract fungal disease will only increase the risk for other plants. Harsh but necessary! On this note, buy from reputable nurseries, not from the cheap stands in department stores.
Aphids are our biggest rose insect pest here but I never reach for the insecticide. My usual approach is to do nothing!
- As the aphids appear, so too do the ladybirds just in time for dinner, and the aphids are on the menu. Last year the new growth on our roses was covered with aphids, I turned a blind eye and within a week the ladybirds had moved in and the pests were gone. Use of insecticide kills both good bugs and bad, upsets the balance in the garden and isn’t good for your health, the planet or your budget.
- If ladybirds are elusive in your garden they can be purchased as a means of organic control, though if you grow a range of plants in your garden and cut out the use of insecticides, they’ll soon move in. They particularly love sheltering under the canopy of umbellifer flowers like Queen Anne’s Lace. I can understand why, they’re beautiful!
- Leaf cutter bees are clever critters leaving perfectly circular holes in leaves. They do no harm, leave them be and admire their ability to nibble a perfect circle.
- If you feel you must treat bad bugs as a last resort, choose to use an organic option like garlic spray, white oil or pyrethrum, but remember it will kill the good bugs too. Under no circumstances should plants be sprayed when the bees are about, and if you see ladybirds don’t spray at all!
The annual rose pruning is often presented as a science akin to brain surgery. Unlike the latter, a bit of slapdash rose pruning is unlikely to lead to the death of the patient. Here are my surgery notes:
- I regularly prune floribunda roses with hedge trimmers and they’ve never complained, if anything flowering more profusely than ever.
- When snipping away with secateurs I pay little attention to the angle of the cut, and sometimes even fail to prune to an outward facing bud. An oddly angled branch may result at times, but it’s corrected as soon as the first bunch of flowers are cut for the vase. The most important thing is to make sure the cut is clean, not ragged, and I do try to snip within a centimetre or two above the bud as leaving a long stub can lead to dieback.
- As is considered good practice I aim for a roughly open vase shape in the plant, though I don’t agonise over it. I do though remove dead, damaged, crossing and diseased growth. Sometimes I prune hard leaving only a few bare branches, and when time is short it’s a quicker trim. Either way, the roses rarely complain and just get on with things.
- Deadheading through the growing season certainly helps to keep the blooms coming, though it doesn’t need to become a chore. Picking regular bunches of flowers for the house keeps most roses flowering, then in between just pinch out spent flowers as you move around the garden. If a rose does need a good trim mid season I’ll grab the secateurs and trim back each flowering stem, or give them a once over with the hand shears.
- I do take hygiene seriously, keeping a spray bottle of metho or diluted bleach close by to clean secateurs, saws and loppers between plants. If disease like die back is present, it can be spread via tools.
Roses are usually noted as “heavy feeders”. Mine have a varied diet depending on what’s on hand:
- They’re given a dose of compost mulch or manure at the beginning of the growing season. If you’re farm based, aged horse, cow, sheep, alpaca or donkey poo does the trick. Of course I mean the poo must be aged, the age of the animal is irrelevant!
- Every few weeks or so throughout the growing season, give them a squirt with seaweed, diluted worm castings or a mild organic foliar feed like diluted weed tea.
- If we have nitrogen rich lucerne hay on hand I’ll mulch with that – the roses love it. I never mulch with pinebark or woodchips, there are better options!
- Potassium rich banana peels are thrown at the base of the plants and coffee grounds are also sprinkled onto the rose garden. They seem to enjoy coffee as much as I do. Sometimes I’ll bury eggshells at the base of the plants too, though they need to be well covered to avoid the noses of hungry dogs.
The bottom line – don’t stress. Roses are tough, they rarely judge, forgive mistakes and reward us with an endless flourish of beautiful flowers. The perfect garden friends!
