There’s always room for one more pot

It’s business as usual. The olive tree (right) is looking perky again and even the French lavender seems to have shrugged off any lasting snow damage... it's amazing how tough plants are.

Which is just as well, because half a dozen David Austin roses had been languishing in their paper bags for several weeks before I was able to finally, three cheers, plant them in their new homes last weekend. They looked stone dead, but then bare-rooted roses always do at this time of year: a bunch of sticks and, in the case of a trio of Rosa rugosa Scabrosas (left), which are probably the toughest roses on the planet, a bunch of sticks with lots of white leafy shoots - they just can't stop growing, however bleak the conditions.

I'd like to say that, now settled into roomy planting holes around a seat, backfilled with well-rotted manure and liberal scatterings of David Austin's Start, a life-enhancing mycorrhizal fungi (www.davidaustinroses.com), as well as a week's exposure to the open air, the white shoots have turned green, but they're no different. Hopefully they'll change to a healthier pallor when the stress wears off. Albino roses seem a bit pointless.

The other three roses are heartbreakers. Short of space - who isn't? I have slapped The Generous Gardener (TGG; right) against the apple tree so that the soft pink blooms will smother the branches post-apple blossom and pre-fruit... that's the plan, anyway. TGG's intoxicating flower fragrance makes Chanel No 5 insipid by comparison.

Few roses have simpler, more perfect flowers than Rosa complicata (left; Latin names can be so contrary!) so I want those rich pink blossomy-flowers to add a relaxed, country air. Complicata's going against the fence where I know she's going to make a very big impact.

And Nevada (right)... well, I really didn't have room for all those huge, voluptuous creamy-white blooms so she's had to go to the bottom of the garden - which means that the end of my particular plot, instead of ending with a whimper, will end with a stupendous, knockout splash of colour and perfume - for three weeks of the year, anyway.

How can any garden not have roses? You can get your quota right now because the garden centres currently stock loads of containerised roses. None of them are duds, but as a rough guide, anything with a fancy French name - Madame Isaac Pereire, Fantin Latour - is guaranteed to be drop-dead gorgeous. Plant now for a romantic, rose-filled summer... and if you don't have room in the border, well, you know the good gardener's mantra, all together now: there's always room for one more pot.

(Rose pictures courtesy of David Austin)

Comments

[deirdre McSharry]

Pattie's blog.

I take great comfort from reading -and seein g the snaps - of Pattie's olive tree as my olive tree is one of the few grey shrubs that have survived the winter plagues, that and the lavenders in pots.Most other grey and silver plants are sad shadows of their former selves.

And the gorgeous pix of roses are encouraging, one must start afresh in the garden and at least the snow drops and camellias are coming on well. Thanks toPattie for being positive about garden plants, better to dwell on the new. And I admire the colour in your garden, another positive thought to follow, yours, Deirdre