Rose Overload

When we moved to this house, there was in order of fifteen roses in the garden. Most were in these stone-ornamented beds on either side of the driveway, outside the front door. Ordinary rose bushes, the majority small and spindly and uninspiring. There were also a few in the far right corner of the back yard, covered in scale and this blah yellow-pink combination which I don't like at all.

I had four potted roses which I'd been attempting to kill with lack of water for a couple of years, and I added them to the back right corner (a little to the right of the scale-infested bushes, which I pruned back ferociously).

To all this I've added eight climbing roses, three bush roses, and a handful of floribunda (I much prefer floribunda). The most successful so far has been a rose called "Shady Lady" which flowers profusely and lasts wonderfully when cut. My climbing iceberg has also grown well, and I really love the look of the unopened buds, white with the faintest flush of pink. I like it so much that today I added three floribunda icebergs (two burgundy and one blushing pink), and am using the bricks from my BBQ demolition to create a kind of paved area around them along the left wall.

I am so very much not a methodical, ordered gardener, and roses respond much better to someone who remembers to fertilise them, and fight off the black spot and aphids. But I'm having fun.