Grow Roses!

In looking back over the many articles I have written over the years on this blog, I have to say that my interest has been largely directed at Lawns and Vegetables. How remiss of me to ignore to a large extent that area of gardening which is the crowning glory of any garden - I mean growing and viewing and smelling FLOWERS - one of God's greatest gifts.

This year, I will try to make up for that lack by spending more time looking at flowers in the garden, and there really is no better place to start than with my favourite flower - the ubiquitous Rose!

It's true.....No garden is complete without roses. There are so many kinds and classes that varieties may be found for almost any purpose, from climbing or pillar roses to highly fragrant teas, great hybrid perpetuals, free-blooming bedders, and good foliage subjects for the shrubbery.

Roses are essentially flower-garden subjects rather than lawn subjects,
since flowers are their chief beauty. Yet the foliage of many of the
highly developed roses is good and attractive when the plants are well
grown.

To secure the best results with roses, they should be placed in a
bed by themselves, where they can be tilled and pruned and well taken
care of. Ordinary garden roses should rarely be grown in mixed borders
of shrubbery and it is usually advisable also to make beds of one variety rather than to mix them with several varieties.

If you want to have roses in mixed shrubbery borders, then you will do well to choose the single and informal types. The best of all these is "Rosa rugosa."



This has not only attractive flowers through the greater part of the season, but it also has very interesting foliage and a striking appearance. The great profusion of bristles and spines gives it an individual and strong character. Even without the flowers, it adds character to a foliage mass.


The foliage is not attacked by insects or fungi, but remains green and glossy throughout the year. The fruit is also very large and showy, and persists on bushes
well through the winter.


Some of the wild roses are also very excellent
for mixing into foliage masses, but, as a rule, their foliage
characteristics are rather weak, and they are liable to be attacked
by thrips.

How to Grow Strawberries

Here we are in February, just coming out of a hard, cold, black winter. I don't know about you but I am longing for some sunshine. Roll on Springtime! This winter has been so depressing, so I make no apologies for looking ahead to those "hazy, lazy days of summer"
To that end, summer always puts me in mind of strawberries. They just go together somehow like peaches and cream. So I threw this article together in the hope that it will raise your spirits and get you looking forwards to those halcyon summer days.


The origin of the name strawberry is up for argument. In old
Saxon, the word was streawberige or streowberrie and was so named,
says one authority, "from the straw-like stems of the plant, or from
the berries lying strewn upon the ground." Another authority tells us:
"It is an old English practice "to lay straw between the rows to preserve the fruit from rotting on the wet ground, from which the name has been supposed to be derived.

More likely it is to do with the wandering habit of the plant, "straw" being a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon "strae", from which we have the English verb "stray."
Again it is said that in the good old days, children strung the berries on straws for sale, hence the name.

History lesson and speculation over. What is a surprise is to learn that strictly speaking, the small seeds scattered over the surface of the berry ARE the fruit, and it is to perfect these seeds that the plants blossom, the stamens scatter, and the pistils receive the pollen on the convex receptacle, which, as the seeds ripen, greatly enlarges, and becomes the pulpy and delicious mass that is popularly
regarded as the fruit. So far from being the fruit, it is only the much altered end of the stem that sustains the fruit or seeds.

Ok, so let's look first of all at soil preparation for growing these little beauties.
It is accepted that the very best soil and the one adapted to the largest number of varieties, is a deep sandy loam, moist, but not wet in its natural state.
The earth should be properly deepened and fertilised and the ground chosen away from shaded areas. Strawberries will not thrive in ground exhausted by roots and covered by the shade of trees.

So position is important. Placing early season varieties on warm, sunny slopes, and late season varieties on moist, heavy land, and cool, northern exposures, the season of this delicious fruit will be prolonged greatly.

Evergreen Gardening!

Whenever I am asked for recommendations for evergreen gardening plants, I invariably advise people to start with the ubiquitous Box plant. Box, or "Buxus" is a genus of about 70 species in the family "Buxaceae" - Common names include box (majority of English-speaking countries) or boxwood (North America).
Box plants are native to western and southern Europe, southwest, southern and eastern Asia, Africa, Madagascar, northernmost South America, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean, with the majority of species tropical or subtropical; only the European and some Asian species are frost-tolerant. Centres of diversity occur in Cuba (about 30 species), China (17 species) and Madagascar (9 species).
They are slow-growing evergreen shrubs and small trees, growing to 2-12 m (rarely 15 m) tall.
The leaves are opposed, rounded to lanceolate, and leathery; they are small in most species, typically 1.5-5 cm long and 0.3-2.5 cm broad, but up to 11 cm long and 5 cm broad in some species. The flowers are small and yellow-green, monoecious with both sexes present on a plant. The fruit is a small capsule 0.5-1.5 cm long (to 3 cm in B. macrocarpa), containing several small seeds.
Box is a slow-growing and very low maintenance wintergreen shrub which is ideal for Evergreen Gardening. Box is most suitable to a clipped hedge or for shaping, and can easily be put around flower beds such as roses. It can be used as a wintergreen shrub potted in containers. In summer it can be planted alongside white annuals for example or in winter alongside cyclamen. Box needs very little attention and is very easy to grow.
Because of its long life cycle, Box Shrubs are often used in Ornamental Gardens where the plant can be shaped and trained in amazing ways and they grow in most soil conditions. The plant tends to do better in shaded areas but needs support in Winter months when cold winds can turn the leaves to a bronze colour. Best to grow Box where exposure to wind is not a problem.
Similarly in Summer, the shallow rooted plant will need protection from the Sun. Some bark mulch will do the trick here.
If planting a box hedge ensure the plants are well watered until they become established. They do require well drained soil but can be allowed to dry out a bit between watering. Usually, a trimming once a year is sufficient to keep the hedge looking neat and crisp but sometimes a second pruning is necessary.
If you are looking to start evergreen gardening, then this would be my recommendation for the first step