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Sun, Feb 9, 14 at 20:52
| I have a bed planted back in 2006 that I've been dismayed about for some years now. It was originally planted with what happened to be on hand, a scattering of once-blooming old roses, English roses, and Hybrid Musks. As I recall the bed did tolerably well for a few years and then went downhill. Roses died, were dug up and moved, I dug some more and gave new plants a try, nothing worked. The bed looks ratty, has holes, is really too narrow for the plants in it to protect each other from sun and wind. I was almost ready to give up on roses entirely and just plant a hedge of hazelnuts, but there were a few roses doing well enough that they would have been painful to move. (DH, who does most of my heavy work, HATES moving plants.) This fall we collected suckers from a lot of my once-blooming old roses and planted them in the propagating beds, and I'm hopeful they'll take. Most of these are varieties I haven't been able to propagate from cuttings and have only one plant of. Well, these are the kinds of roses that have done best in my problem bed, and that do well in most of the more difficult parts of the garden. So I plan on digging and amending big holes--this ought to bring the ground up at least to the level of mediocre soil--and planting Damasks and Gallicas and Foetidas. I'll move out the surviving Hybrid Musks and other problem children, shift around or simply eliminate the ratty companion plants, and perhaps when I'm done I'll have a respectable planting of healthy roses. Melissa |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by jeannie2009 PNW 7/8 (My Page) on Mon, Feb 10, 14 at 8:00
| You've got a plan for fixing a section that needs extra help. Would it make any sense to take cuttings of the ratty looking roses which then could be planted elsewhere. That would save hubby from the monster of moving large rose bushes? Enjoy reading your plans. |
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- Posted by mendocino_rose z8 N CA. (My Page) on Mon, Feb 10, 14 at 9:31
| There are a couple of areas that have always been troublesome for me. I think it is partly that they need more water and I have a problem getting water to them. I'm going to think of less fussy plants for these spots. |
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| Melissa, it sounds like you have the right idea for this area. I hope it works out well for you. I also have a spot where I've lost 4 roses. I can't figure it out, but I'm afraid to put another one there and lose it. Now I'm trying to decide what else to put in that bed. It has a large 8ft. trellis with Don Juan on one side and Lamarque on the other. It's a round bed with bulbs around the perimeter and iris and some clematis near the roses. I just need something in the center as a focal point. Any ideas? Maybe something evergreen like my Spring Bouquet verbena? Lou |
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| There are spots where nothing seems to thrive, and for no apparent reason. I always suspect mysterious soil diseases, but I am pretty much making that up to comfort myself. |
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- Posted by melissa_thefarm NItaly (My Page) on Wed, Feb 12, 14 at 0:01
| Jeannie, thanks. About the cuttings, it's easier just to take the plants and pot them up. They're so run down that cuttings would be unlikely to take, and most of the roses to be moved are puny specimens. It always feels good when I come up with a solution to a garden problem. Sometimes I'm not even fully conscious that there's a problem, but I feel discomfort and unhappiness looking at an area. Then, and not rarely some years have passed (we have such a big garden, it's easy to ignore parts of it I don't know what to do with) the solution floats up to the surface of my mind. I suppose one of my fundamental gardening axioms is a belief that any site, any condition whatever, can be gardened in, and that garden can be beautiful. I've had an awful cold the last few days, but yesterday DH and I went out for a short walk that turned into a longer walk when we went up a neglected track I'd never taken before. It was very poor, very rocky ground with numerous stone outcroppings, the track all broken rock, the flora a mixed open woodland of hardbitten oaks and colonizing junipers (some of which displayed a distinctly fastigate habit: that was interesting). A stream ran parallel with the road, its stony channel filled with clear water from our recent rains. Anyway, this poor, rocky ground, this open woodland, it was beautiful. It wasn't a place any sane person would ever try to grow lettuces or tomatoes or magnolias in, but it had its own beauty. I discovered two or three varieties of orchid, which often grow here in the worst kind of ground (I suppose anything that required good soil went extinct in centuries of plowing), and as we went higher and higher enjoyed the grand views across the valley. It was a beautiful walk. This bed I'm making these plans for was never adequately prepared--it was one of our early ones when we were more ignorant than now--and when I think about it, at the beginning of our gardening here we may have enjoyed a series of relatively dry winters that didn't bring to the fore our drainage problems. The first winter I remember as a really wet one was 2009-10, and it was an eye-opener. The shade garden flooded, Teas rotting and dying left and right. Perhaps that's when this bed started going downhill. Anyway, I'm enjoying the thought of tearing out some puny companion plants, digging good holes, and planting my once bloomers. We have suckers of all three of the forms of R. foetida: the species, 'Persian Yellow', and 'Austrian Copper', the last of which has struggled elsewhere for years and really deserves a decent site. DH calls it 'Copper Gold', a fitting description, and when he finally gets to see it in its glory he's going to be in love. 'Pink Leda' and 'Leda', the first in particular a monster of vigor, and 'Petite Lisette', then a gaggle of Gallicas, 'Bijou des Prairies' and a remaining plant of 'Pompon Blanc Parfait' from the three I grew from cuttings. I think this can work. And in any case, if my imagination can often cause me worry and unhappiness, in this case imagining the planting to be is very cheerful. Melissa |
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