I am trying again with rambling roses behind the deck along the side of the wood in the back garden. 'Paul's Himalayan Musk' does great things up the wild cherry, and I wanted to carry the effect round the corner in a splash of darker pink. Only, it proved to be too dark in the shade of the deck for the roses to get going, and even though they were theoretically capable of climbing to fifteen feet or more, the first yard eluded them and they never made it up into the light.
I ordered replacements and grew them on in pots, hoping to give them a head start. They didn't make quite such long new stems as I'd hoped, but I wasn't convinced that a second year in pots would improve matters, and decided to stick to the plan of planting them out this autumn. In fact, I have missed the boat as by now it's early winter, but the soil is still quite warm and I thought they should start getting their roots out before the spring. As the old saying goes, plant a tree before Christmas and ask it to grow, plant a tree after Christmas and beg it to grow.
The first is Rosa multiflora 'Platyphylla'. It is an old variety, bred in 1815, and promises blooms in various shades from white through to pink and lilac. Perhaps that is how it got its alternative name of the Seven Sisters Rose. To keep it company I chose 'Alexandre Girault', which should have apple scented flowers of reddish pink. They have got two large multistem hazels and one side of the wild gean to play in, so there should be plenty of room for both, if I can just get them to start growing and up into the light.
To try and give them a fighting chance I took my saw and the pole lopper and trimmed the front of the hazels to open up a clear line from where I judged the sun would be in summer to the base of the roses, while trying to keep the hazels looking untrimmed and as natural as possible. They mark the end of the wood, and I really wanted to avoid the faced-up, supermarket car park look. Trimming shrubs to tight domes and flat planes need not be restricted to evergreens: I have seen the yellow leaved Philadelphus coronarius 'Aureus' used very effectively as a series of tightly shaped balls. Before ever taking saw and secateurs to any woody plant, though, you need to be clear what kind of finish you are aiming for.
While I'd got the saw and stepladder out I tidied the entrance to the wood. It used to be shaping up rather nicely with a curved tunnel of holly, so that the view into the wood opened out gradually as you stepped through the gate instead of being visible all at once from the garden, then a freak wind sent the hollies sideways and I had to cut one to the ground. The stump is now regenerating enthusiastically, but one of the others had slumped further so that the tunnel would have been fine for hobbits but was too low for the Systems Administrator. I trimmed a great many sticky-out and dangly bits and it all began to look more promising. There is a general perception among gardeners that holly is slow, but I think the truth is more nuanced than that. Some of the variegated varieties are slower, and the hedgehog hollies seem especially slow growers, but plain green wild holly is not particularly sluggish. All hollies, however, seem to dislike transplanting so that hollies planted out of pots from the garden centre lag behind self-sown wild ones. People try to compensate by buying bigger specimens, which of course take even longer to get going. That's my theory. If you are going to buy holly your best bet is probably to get one of the young, small, cheap plants sold for winter containers, as long as you can find the variety you want.
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