back in the garden

Today was the first time I've done any work in the garden for nine days, apart from watering the pots.  I kicked off by deadheading the dahlias.  The ones in containers are not blooming so well as they should be, and the leaves look rather pallid, so I had better dose them more regularly with tomato food.  Then I did a run to the dump, and weeded around the compost bins.  Never let it be said that I don't know how to enjoy my days off.

The weeds have grown prodigously in the last week, shooting up like, well, like weeds, really.  Some have managed to set seed, which shouldn't have been allowed to happen, but there you go.  The rambling rose 'Paul's Himalayan Musk' has made a tremendous flush of late summer growth, and has once again managed to block the steps down to the bottom of the garden, as I discovered on Sunday when we took our friends to see the holey stone, and had to go the other way round the block.  Fortunately the wind was in the right direction recently for the Systems Administrator to have a bonfire, blowing the smoke back into our wood rather than on to our neighbour's lettuces, so there is space for me to dump a new pile of prunings.  The S.A. has embarked on cutting the eleagnus hedge, which has shot out over the drive again, to the point where it would be a squeeze for a transit van to make it to the front door, let alone an oil tanker or any other delivery involving a lorry.

The stooled Paulownia tomentosa have responded to the damper weather by throwing up stout shoots fully 3-4m high, with truly enormous leaves.  I raised the plants from seed, which I recall was fairly easy, and they also spread by suckers.  The stems are hollow, and the books tell you to cut the trunks down in the spring, if you are going to coppice them.  These ended up being cut down in the autumn, because I'd not got round to stooling them the previous spring, and they had got far too big for their position so close to the house.  They survived the experience, despite the severity of last winter.  Christopher Lloyd warns that repeated stooling can weaken them to the point of death, but these are still very much alive (so far).

Taking our visitors to see the garden statuary (at their request.  I never inflict a garden tour on people unless they ask) I discovered that since I last made it down to the lowest part, the Dicentra scandens had scrambled over the Magnolia stellata so enthusiastically that the latter was practically invisible.  The little yellow bleeding heart flowers of the Dicentra are quite sweet, and the leaves look so delicate that you could scarcely believe it would hurt anything, but I must keep an eye on the magnolia and check that it doesn't seem to mind being engulfed in late summer.  There is a wild bryony in there as well, and that is going to have to go, as its large, vaguely vine shaped leaves are too smothering.  It seeds like crazy, so there are plenty of others around the place.

The Kirengeshoma palmata was just opening its yellow bells too.  This is a tall, handsome woodlander which rather unusually flowers at this time of the year rather than spring.  I have tried and utterly failed to germinate it from seed, but the plant I bought and planted in a fairly leafy, shady, sheltered spot has grown happily with little further attention.  Grown in black plastic 2 litre pots and exposed to sunshine as when for sale in the plant centre, it is one of the most wretched, scorched, miserable looking plants you have ever seen, and sells correspondingly badly (thus compounding the problem) whereas in the garden it is a fine-looking plant.

growing roses up trees

I said I would return to the subject of roses grown up trees.  'Paul's Himalayan Musk' is currently in full bloom, so this seems the time.  'Paul's Himalayan Musk' is a rambler, with big clusters of small, soft pink flowers, normally coming out around the first week of June, but like most of the other roses it's early this year.  It is gently scented, though the smell is rather overpowered by a honeysuckle nearby.  The plant is extremely vigorous, and thorny.

The books are very precise in their instructions on how to grow roses up trees.  We are told not to plant them too close to the trunk, where the ground will be very dry and rooty, but to plant them towards the edge of the canopy and lead them to the trunk along a cane or rope.  I have seen an old anchor chain used for this purpose in a garden in St. Osyth, which seemed a clever bit of recycling in a coastal area, and made a very nice catenary curve.  I don't mind that bit of the instructions.  The bit that bugs me is the received wisdom that we should plant the rose on the downwind side of the tree, so that the prevailing wind will blow it into the crown.

'Paul's Himalayan Musk' is planted to the east of the wild gean it is supposed to be growing up, because that's where there was space for the roots.  Prevailing winds in the UK are from the southwest, but if it had been to the southwest of the tree it would have been in the lawn.  The sun rises in the east, moves round through the south, and sets in the west.  The rose wants to reach out to the light, and this far outweighs any effect a bit of wind, or even the odd gale, has on its habit of growth.  It sends great long tentacles of growth out to the south, the east, and anywhere except the dark interior of the tree.  I really don't think the wind makes a smidgin of difference.  In fact I don't think the rose is particularly interested in going up the tree.  It would be perfectly happy just taking off across the lawn.

The effect of a large pink rose in a tree is pretty and extremely romantic, seen from a distance, as shown in these photos taken from the top lawn and the bottom lawn.  Encountered close up it is less romantic, as anyone getting within a couple of metres of it is likely to be clawed by one of the tentacles, and they are rampaging through the collection of potted Hamamelis and the recycled metal secretary bird.  When I looked out of the bathroom window this morning I had a moment of panic that the bird's head appeared to have fallen off, before realising that it had merely been engulfed by rose foliage.  The exuberant new growth is blocking the steps between the top and bottom lawns, which in my book is a no-no.  Good circulation is essential for any garden, besides which I need to get the hose up and down those steps.

After I'd taken the pictures, I twirled as many wandering stems as possible into the tree.  A couple broke in the process, and some unstuck themselves again, but some will catch with their prickles and consent to grow into the cherry.  There were a couple I couldn't reach, so I'll have a go at them later with a boathook we once bought in a second hand shop in a fit of retail excitement, and that now comes in useful for rose training.  The stems I couldn't persuade to grow into the tree were cut off, so the steps are just passable.  I'll take a bit more off once flowering has finished.  The steps were quite clear at the end of winter, which shows how much growth a rambler rose makes in a couple of months.

I love roses up trees, but they do seem to take a bit more organising than you would guess, looking at the tidy diagrams in the books.