a great climbing rose

Roses are opening all around the garden.  I love roses, especially species and old-fashioned ones, but have a slightly laissez faire attitude to their cultivation.  They get pruned with some care and attention, and they get fed, but routine spraying is out.  The birds and ladybirds take care of insect pests, and if a rose gets blackspot so badly it fails to thrive then it goes on the bonfire and I try again with something different.  Conditions here are tough, with soil which is mostly very light sand or else clay subsoil, and low annual rainfall, and some rose bushes have simply dwindled away over the years.  Others do very well.

One such is 'Meg', a climbing hybrid tea bred by Gosset in 1954.  It (or she) has semi double flowers, up to 12cm across, that are a rich apricot when they first open, and fade to shell pink.  At the centre is a great boss of stamens in a soft shade of orange-apricot.  The half open flower I picked just now has streaks of cherry pink at the margins of the petals, and a glow of yellow towards the base.  I find them very beautiful.  The leaves are leathery and mid-green, and have no suspicion of disease.  The flowers are moderately scented.  After the initial flowering I don't get much of a later display, but the hips are superb, as large as conkers and a rich shade of coral (except last winter when the extreme cold sent them brown).  We use them as part of the Christmas decorations on the mantelpiece each December.

'Meg' grows on the wall of a shed, behind the herb bed in very light soil, and thrives there.  I like the black weatherboarding as a background to the flowers.  She has moved once, since she was originally planted against the next shed along, before this one was built (we have now reached the point where there is definitely no room for any more sheds, so when they are full we have to tidy them up instead of building another) and took the move in her stride.  She stretches the full length of the wall, which must be around 4m, and I have to struggle to pull the top growth down to below the level of the roof.  I reckon she would happily climb 3-4m given support.

I bought my original plant from Cants of Colchester,more than twenty years ago, because I liked the sound of it in their catalogue.  It was so good that when I moved house I bought another one.  It is still available in the UK via Peter Beales, who claim to be the only suppliers.  I have taken a flower and the hips in season in to work, to show the boss, who thanked me nicely but declined to stock it, when it was available on a wholesalers list.  Maybe we already have enough pink climbers, or salmon pink isn't considered such a safe bet as appleblossom.  The Peter Beales write-up agrees with my conclusion that it is a good rose for poor soil, and that the scent is only moderate, but classifies it as a repeat flowerer, and doesn't mention the hips, which is confusing.  Peter Beales classes 'Meg' as suitable for growing in a warm climate, and intolerant of shade, and she gets a good baking with us, on a south-facing, black painted wall surrounded by gravel.  If you have a hot, sunny, dry garden, and want a large obliging rose that is a good doer, and aren't prejudiced against apricot pink, then 'Meg' could be the one for you.

a long deferred job finally accomplished

Today I finished digging out the rootball of a defunct Hebe salicifolia.  That one sentence describes how I spent an entire day of my life.  It was a large shrub, that must have grown to reach 3m high and wide over the years.  I was beginning to think that it was not looking so comely as it had, and that it was time to start thinking about a replacement, when the 2009-10 winter killed a lot of the branches without killing the entire plant outright.  I lopped most of them off, but in the mass of clearing up required after that winter never got round to tackling the roots (about my least favourite gardening task).  Last winter damaged it some more, but still without killing it.  Yesterday and today I ceased to put off the dread deed any longer.  The hebe was in an open border with nothing large or precious too close to it, and room to swing a pickaxe, but even so after the first hour I thought the job was going to take the rest of the season.  When I finally chopped through the bottom of the rootball I was left with a lump of soil and roots approximately 1m by 60cm by 40cm, and had to summon help to heave it out of the hole.  It took the rest of the afternoon to chisel soil off the rootball, so that I wouldn't be left with a hole in the ground 1m by 60cm by 40cm, and so that the great ball of roots had some hope of burning on the bonfire.

The space vacated by the hebe will provide a new home for a replacement Prunus x subhirtella 'Autumnalis'.  Then I've got plans for a burnt orange colour scheme.  Burnt orange doesn't especially go with palest pink cherry flowers, but that's fine because they'll happen in different seasons.  There is a berberis called 'Orange Rocket' that has completely fabulous dark orange new leaves, which I fell for as soon as I saw it, and think will go very well next to the purple leaved cotinus that is finally starting to make some size, after a painfully slow start.  Then there is a modern rose called 'Hot Chocolate', with burnt orange flowers which I find completely delightful.  The name is a pity, and it was declared novelty rose of the year a while back, which is a bit embarassing.  The soil in that bed is so light and sandy and lacking in structure that I feel a bit optimistic asking the poor rose to grow in it, but I can apply loads of organic material.  Every year, for the rest of our mutual existence.  A rose grower at the Hampton Court Flower Show last year told me that 'Hot Chocolate' was a good doer, which may be the case, or he may have been hoping to sell me some.  Then there are some Alchemilla mollis to come out, which I feel sad about as I originally raised them from seed, but I have seen how they look when they are growing well and mine don't look like that.  It really is too dry for them.  Also some Lychnis coronaria, which has committed the opposite crime of doing too well.  It seeds like the devil in that bed, and forms choking mats of leaf and root that seem to starve and suffocate all  neighbouring plants.  Truly gardeners are never satisfied.