Roses on September 1

Yesterday afternoon, in between rain showers, the light was perfect for me to take my camera outside and capture images of some of the roses.  Come on ... let's take a look.  (Highlighted names under the photos are links to further information about that rose on Help Me Find, the best site on the web for roses.)

'Champneys' Pink Cluster' and a little friend.

"Sacramento Cemetery Musk Seedling"  aka, "Jim Henley"

'Laurent Carle'

It's been a while since I did any photography with something other than my iPhone 6s.  My phone takes decent photos, but my trusty, ancient Nikon D70 is much better at accurately capturing close-up images in the garden.

"Bryan Freidel Pink Tea" and a tiny spider

'Perle d'Or'

'Lyon Rose'

It's been a hard summer in the garden.  Weather was the main culprit.  It wasn't as hot as usual, but June and July were incredibly dry.  Japanese Beetles arrived on schedule in early June, in lower numbers than last year, but they stayed around for a few weeks longer then normal.  (There are still a few stragglers out there.)  Curly Rose Slugs are a big pest right now.  I pick them off when I see them, but it's a challenge.

'Maria Stern'

"Zalud House Shingled Raspberry"

Through it all, the garden persists.  Some roses are struggling ... others shake off the challenges and soldier on.  One of the best of the latter is my Yellow Seedling, which I grew in 2009 from a seed in an open-pollinated hip on 'Peace'.  This rose blooms and grows, despite heat and drought, almost immune to blackspot.  It's a star!

Unregistered yellow seedling.

Unregistered yellow seedling.

It's delightful to wander the property to see the roses that are already putting on a lovely show for fall.  As I was finishing up in the front yard, the battery on my camera died.  I will have to wait for another day to show you the rest of the garden.  (The English Roses and Noisettes in the Barn Garden are particularly nice.)  

Barn Garden Progress

When we last saw the 15' x 18' expansion of the Barn Garden earlier this week, I had marked it off and laid landscape fabric in the area.  

The next step was to add an edge.  In this case, salvaged 4x4 fence posts from our dwindling stash, cut to size and fastened with ground spikes.  They're not beautiful, but they do their job ... keeping the mulch IN and most of the creeping weeds OUT. 

The final step, in this part of the process, was to add a generous layer of mulch.

The combination of landscape fabric and mulch will block the light to the grass underneath, and most of it should die within the next few weeks.  By the time summer is waning and temperatures begin to cool, the area will be ready to plant.  What am I planting here, you ask?

Some of them are:

"Talcott Noisette" from cuttings at Hollywood Cemetery.

"Tutta's Noisette" from Rose Petals Nursery.

"Ryland Rose" from cuttings at Hollywood Cemetery.

"Lathrop Noisette" from cuttings at Hollywood Cemetery

"Woodbine Rose" from cuttings at a cemetery in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

"Isaacs Rose" from cuttings at Hollywood Cemetery

For now, these babies will continue to live safely in their little pots ... where I can give them a lot of attention, till the weather is favorable for them to live in the ground on their own.

Expanding the Barn Garden

The Barn Garden (formerly known as the English Garden) was designed and installed in 2010.  Originally, it held only my collection of David Austin English roses.  Over time, some of the Austin roses showed that they are ill suited to life in hot, humid Virginia, and I replaced them with Noisettes. 

One spot adjacent to the garden has always been difficult to maintain.  It's a small area (15' x 18'), with a well head (no power to the well, but there's water in there), an inside corner, and a big pile of rocks.  I need more space for roses, my husband things to be as easy as possible on him when he mows, and we decided that the best way to accomplish both of these objectives would be to clear this spot and make it part of the garden.

This is how it looks from space, courtesy of the folks at Google.

2010, as my husband was helping mulch the newly-planted baby English roses.  Original plant list is HERE.

2014.  Updated plant list at that time is in THIS post.

This garden expansion was easy to accomplish.  I marked the area with string, spray-painted the lines on the ground, and got to work laying ground cloth for the extended path and landscape fabric where the new planting area would be.

Then it was a simple matter of unrolling and stapling more rows of landscape fabric into place.

Laying landscape fabric like this feels like I'm upholstering the yard ... as I unroll it and hammer ground staples to hold it in place, and cut around obstacles like the well head.

After a couple of hours, I was finished.  

Next step is to cut and install 4x4 timbers around the edges of the new bed and to add mulch.  Mulch is very important, because it blocks the sunlight and kills the grass underneath the landscape fabric.  Later this summer, when the worst of the heat is behind us, I can plant the new roses.  Mostly Noisettes, I think ... no surprise.

A Very Special Arrangement

This is the arrangement that I made from the flowers that I gathered from the roses that grow at Hollywood Cemetery.  

Do what you can to spend some time with loved ones this weekend, and appreciate what they mean to you.  That's exactly what I will be doing ... as we gather to celebrate Doug later today.

A Morning Walk in the Garden, and the Making of Hellebore Hill

Early yesterday morning, I put on my red rubber garden shoes, slipped a hoodie over my pajamas, grabbed my camera, and I headed out to see what there was to see in the garden.

The sun was bright, and the shadows were long.  I love early morning in the garden.

The English Garden has recovered really well from last winter's damage.

Many of my David Austin roses in the English Garden are flowering, though few of the flowers are picture perfect.  That's just how it is in late fall ... doesn't make them any less beautiful to me.

The little baby Noisette roses in the English Garden have settled in and grown a lot since I planted them in August. 

Mystery Noisette #1 that lost its tag.

Mystery Noisette #1 that lost its tag.

Mystery Noisette #2, with a faded tag.

Mystery Noisette #2, with a faded tag.

"Mine Road Noisette"

In another part of the garden, 'Belle Vichyssoise' has opened a beautiful spray of fragrant flowers and 'Pink Perpetue' was showing off a perfect flower that looks almost like a camellia.

Today, I worked in the shade garden for most of the day ... hoping to get the area prepped and lot of new plants into the ground.  I am calling this garden Hellebore Hill, because it's catchy and it will have mostly Hellebores in it.  Before I could plant anything, I had to clear the area of hundreds of fallen black walnuts.  I made two trips with the tractor, with the bucket full of nuts, and dumped them in the tree line at the back of our property.

I don't use the tractor a lot, so I don't get to see this view very often.

Once the nuts were gone and the weeds were pulled, it was time to plant.  This 8 x 8 foot space is thickly planted, because I want it to fill in and the plants to grow together.  It contains mostly free plants, a few bargain plants, and some great specimen plants from my garden club plant exchange last weekend ... thirteen two-year-old seedling Hellebores, two fall-flowering Japanese Anemones, two Black Arums (Arum pictum), one Heuchera villosa, and one Aureomaculata Leopard Plant.  It also has ten Colchicums (which are finished for the season) and three clumps of daffodil bulbs.

Even though I was tired after all the prep work, digging all those holes and planting the plants, I continued to work ... putting down a good layer of newspaper on the bare soil and covering it with mulch.  

I'm glad I stuck with it and finished this part of the job completely, because it felt so good to step back and see what I had accomplished.

Soon, I hope to continue the progress down this bed, weeding and planting as I can, to connect this new part of the garden to the existing part that contains mostly mature Hellebores and Hostas.  If I can do this, it means that I will have fewer plants in pots, more plants in the ground, and an awesome new garden to enjoy ... instead of the weed patch that had been there.

Flowers on Friday ... A Day at Tufton

I closed the retail portion of Hartwood Roses in 2012 in order to could focus more on rose preservation and education.  Yesterday was one of those "preservation" days ... I spent the afternoon at Monticello's Tufton Farm, taking cuttings of some of the rarest roses in the Leonie Bell Noisette Garden.

"Cato's Cluster"

Leonie Bell was a superstar in the rose world, a champion of old roses, and a rose hunter in a time when roses in cemeteries and abandoned places were disappearing at an alarming rate.  The garden at Tufton Farm is dedicated to her memory, and it has some of the rare and wonderful roses that she and other rose hunters have found.  The collection contains many examples of Noisette roses, and there are also roses that are more commonly available, like 'Old Blush' and other China roses, which factored into the development of the Noisettes and most of our modern repeat-flowering roses.

"Smith's Yellow Noisette"

My goal yesterday was to take cuttings of each rose in the Bell Garden that I don't have or isn't easily available in commerce.  (For example, "Cato's Cluster" used to be available from Vintage Gardens ... but now there is not a US source.)

"Lingo Musk" (Noisette)

I did not need to take cuttings of the true Musk roses in the garden, because all of these are safely held in the collection at Florida Southern College.

"Bremo Musk"

After two and a half hours of work, I had three gallon-sized zipper bags that contained cuttings of fourteen roses.  These bags are in my refrigerator right now, and I will process and plant all of the cuttings later today.  If everything goes as planned and the cuttings root like they're supposed to, I hope to have baby plants of each rose later in the year ... to pass along to other rose preservationists and to provide back-up copies for Tufton.

unknown white Noisette

I really enjoyed my afternoon at Tufton.  The weather was beautiful and the air in the garden was heavy with the scent of the roses, especially the wonderful, wafting fragrance of the Musk roses.  

(To learn more about the Leonie Bell Noisette Garden, and about Leonie Bell herself, click HERE to go to a post on the Monticello blog written by Ben Whitacre.)