the roses arrive

The bare root roses arrived today from rose grower Trevor White, only ten days after ordering them.  An email popped up in my inbox in the middle of the morning to say they'd been dispatched and would arrive within three working days, so I thought I'd better go and buy some compost.  The advantages of buying bare root roses by mail order rather than container grown plants are firstly that you have a much wider choice, and secondly that they are cheaper.  In fact my strategy now for ramblers is to start them off for their first season in large containers, bigger than the deep 3 litre pots garden centres use, and let them make some extension growth before planting them out.  This is based on bitter experience, that roses tend to be slow to get going in their first summer, and if everything around them has shot up by midsummer they tend to languish in the shade and never manage to grow at all, fading away quietly over a season or two.  When I got to B&Q they had some reasonably priced large plastic pots that were highly suitable for my purpose, apart from the fact that for some bizarre reason they had been manufactured without drainage holes.

When I got home I the paper sack of roses was already waiting on the doorstep.  The Systems Administrator obligingly drilled holes in the bases of the pots, and I opened the paper sack, and the black plastic bag inside the paper sack, and started trying to disentangle the roses from each other while keeping their roots covered as much as possible.  There was a cold wind blowing, and you really don't want to have bare roots waving around in the wind, or they will dry out in no time.  They looked very good plants, with generous root systems and lots of stems.

One was not a climber and went straight into the ground, the rugosa rose 'Sarah van Fleet'.  The rugosas originate in Japan and are splendid roses for light soil.  I have seen them growing in the sides of a Dutch marina in what was basically a sand dune.  They shrug off the leaf diseases, despising black spot and mildew.  Indeed, their mid green, somewhat pleated foliage does not look especially rose-like.  Rugosas generally have splendid round hips, and flower in shades of pink or white, often at the same time as the large, round hips.  'Sarah van Fleet' has scented, double, pale pink flowers produced over a long period.  Robin Lane Fox awarded her his award for submarine rose of the year, after observing how well one bounced back in a seaside garden that was flooded for a fortnight.  I do not expect our garden to be flooded, or at least if it is then how well the roses cope will be the least of my problems, but I do want 'Sarah van Fleet' to grow in a windy spot at the top of the sloping bed in horrible dry sand.  I dug a lot of compost into the bed earlier in the year, and I will mulch it, but even so it is a tough spot for a rose.  My other choice would have been Rosa pimpinellifolia, but I already have one of those which is doing very well in an even windier spot just inside the entrance.

I debated whether to plant 'Rambling Rector' directly into the ground by the little oak tree, and decided I would start that off in a pot like the other ramblers.  Once it can get up into the oak it will enjoy plenty of sun, but first it has to move out of the shadow of the Eleagnus hedge so it could probably do with a head start.  It is an old variety, described by Peter Beales as being of great age and by Trevor White as Very Old, and it is extremely vigorous.  We saw a wonderful specimen at the Boxford Open Gardens, that required fierce pruning to keep it even halfway under control, and a couple of splendid plants on our trip to Norfolk rose gardens this summer.  The flowers are white and scented, the foliage glossy and healthy, and we agreed that it looked just the sort of thing to grow into an oak tree.  I will have to water it regularly and feed it lavishly in its first few years, and hope that it can get its feet down.

'Ayrshire Splendens' is fairly old, dating from 1835.  This has small, fully double, myrrh scented, pale pink flowers emerging from purplish buds, according to the website, and very pliant growth, which made it sound a good bet to tie in to the space under the veranda.  I would have liked 'Dundee Rambler' which we saw at Mannington, but David Austin was the only supplier who listed that and they were out of stock.  I thought I would rather press on with the veranda project, and maybe find somewhere else to put 'Dundee Rambler' later on if I managed to get hold of one.  To keep 'Ayrshire Splendens' company I plumped for 'Phyllis Bide', a rambler with the unusual habit for a rambling rose of repeat flowering, which I did have on the rose bank but see less of every year as it is smothered by other, more rampant varieties.  'Phyllis Bide' has flowers in a mixture of pink and yellow, which sounds as though it might be horrid but is actually delightful.  When I unpacked the paper sack and checked it against what I'd ordered I found I had actually managed to order two 'Phyllis Bide' by mistake, but the veranda is quite long and I might as well plant both.

'Francis E Lester', white single flowers, and 'La Mortola', also white, are back-up replacement plants for the side of the wood, where the specimens I put straight into the soil have not fared well, shaded out by the summer rush of growth which the potting technique is intended to overcome.  I was tempted by Peter Beales offer of the tiny flowered white 'Mannington Cascade' and purple 'Mannington Mauve', but resisted, pending a space to put them.  Maybe next year if I manage to clear more of the brambles along the side of the wood, and the growing on in pots works.