Our newly Zone 8a (we used to be 7b) garden is shivering with unusually cold weather: temperatures in the low teens at night, sometimes not rising above freezing even on sunny days. Because I have a number of newly planted shrubs and some cherished David Austin roses in big pots, and because we suffered plant loss and damage in last winter’s hard freeze, I decided to take more active measures to protect my plants, even though I had already sprayed many of them with Wilt Stop (which I hadn’t done last year).
First, I added a few more inches of mulch to flowerbeds and mixed borders. Then I wrapped large pots with 1/2 inch thick bubble wrap. Next, I covered one row of big pots with newly ordered, heavier frost cloth, secured with clothes pins. Then I placed another length of the same heavier frost cloth over the berm where I lost several lavender plants last year, supported by plant hoops. I put the lighter frost cloth I already had around the tea olive that was hard hit last year but has been growing back nicely, and the Debutante camellia that lives in a pot next to it.
I ordered several frost cloth bags with drawstrings, and those went over the roses I had planted this fall, some in the ground and some in pots. A couple of extra bags went over the still small native azaleas I planted two years ago. A large green frost “planket” was tied down over a cluster of pots with herbs like lavender and sage, and another over a prized Japanese maple. When I shared photos of my work with friends, one of them commented that it looked like a Christo garden, referring to the artist who was famous for his outdoor art installations that involved wrapping of landscape elements.
I hope you and your gardens are well-insulated against the cold!
Hello again! It has been too long since I posted here, so this will be longer than usual; my other blog, “Serenity Now: Scents and Sensibilities” has been taking up a lot of time as I’m doing two monthly blogging projects with a blogger friend. And in between, I’ve actually been doing the gardening! I will retire at the end of this month and have been using up vacation days that won’t get paid out, so the garden has gotten much more focused attention lately. I think I’ve finally tamed the vegetable garden; I planted a lot less this spring and have been more regular in pinching off tomato shoots and redirecting wayward morning glory tendrils. My eggplants and herbs have been a major success!
Eggplants Rosa Bianca and Listada de Gandia for the grill; parsley for chimichurri sauce
I’m especially proud of how well my David Austin roses have been doing in their large pots on our sunny front terrace. My working from home two days a week since 2021 has really served them well — I’ve been more diligent about everything from watering to feeding to spraying, and I’ve been rewarded with multiple flushes of bloom, especially from Lady of Shalott and Winchester Cathedral. Gotta admit, my attraction to the latter is based more on the pop song of that name than the actual cathedral, which I’ve never seen. I remember the song from my childhood, when my English mother played pop radio while raising three children, while her younger sister cavorted through Swinging Sixties London as a model and actress. Yes, she sent us Beatles albums before they were released in the US, which made me a lifelong fan. The first song I remember singing by myself was “She Loves You (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)“.
Winchester Cathedral, by The New Vaudeville Band; film from The Ed Sullivan Show.
My poor neglected Teasing Georgia has not bloomed well this year, and she’s usually a trouper even in our hot, humid climate, so I’m trying to do better by her with more regular feeds, including with micronutrients. I need to climb up a ladder to prune out dead wood, and I think I must get my husband to prune away another branch from a nearby dogwood that now shades part of the rose arbor.
Speaking of doing better by my roses, I’ve been looking into planting one or more into bottomless planters. I have a beautiful Generous Gardener rose in a large pot that I placed in a border. Lo and behold, GG has sent its roots right down through the drainage hole, which means the poor rose now gets waterlogged on a regular basis with all the rain we’ve had this year. That will finish it, so I need a better arrangement, but I did that in the first place because the soil where I wanted to plant her wasn’t great, and it was full of competing shallow roots from azaleas.
Here’s a great video about bottomless planters by Bunny Guinness, a noted horticulturist and landscape architect, garden columnist, BBC radio panelist, and multiple gold medal winner at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. She also happens to be the niece of the late David Austin, hybridizer of the marvelous English Roses, who named a rose after her.
Bunny Guinness on bottomless planters
Okay, I am seriously not prepared or qualified to saw out the bottom of terracotta pots! BUT I think I’ve found a solution. I was considering using grow bags and cutting out the bottoms (because, of course, on top of the long-suffering Generous Gardener et al., I have pre-ordered four more DA roses for delivery next January), but this seems to be a much better option.
Have you ever used a bottomless planter? For roses? All comments and advice are welcome!
I devoted today’s “Fragrance Friday” on my other blog to David Austin, OBE, creator of the English Roses, about which I have written before: Fragrance Friday: David Austin Roses. I just got the latest catalogue in the mail, with its usual tempting array of spectacular roses old and new.
Do you grow any of his beautiful roses? Which ones?
‘The Generous Gardener’ rose is one of my favourites. It requires some discipline not to list its selling points, even after so many years, but I’ll confine myself to observing that it is one of the more fragrant English roses, best grown as a short climber against a wall or sturdy pillar. That hardly counts, […]
I love David Austin roses, I love Susan Rushton’s photographs, and I love this rose, Generous Gardener, in particular! Enjoy Susan’s post — I am reminded that my own roses are in need of some TLC this Labor Day weekend, so I’ll sign off again.
This is a tardy Saturday Snippet, posted on a Sunday because I spent most of yesterday actually planting things in my garden! But I have the perfect reason to post this weekend, complete with literary tie-in: my new rosebush, Le Petit Prince.
Also known as La Rose du Petit Prince, this beautiful rose is named for the classic novella Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, which features a Rose who is the Little Prince’s responsibility and love, in spite of her flaws.
But here’s some additional, wonderful information about the actual rose, from the blog www.thelittleprince.com:
“For over 50 years the Pépinières et Roseraies Georges Delbard nursery gardeners have been creating exceptional roses. Very possibly you have a Claude Monet or Comtesse de Ségur rose bush growing in your garden … It was back in 2008 that they first thought of creating the Little Prince rose in partnership with the Petits Princes Association! It was altogether fitting that the celebrated little fair-haired Prince who was so attached to his flower should have a rose named after him. With its beautiful mauve petals with hints of violet, the Little Prince Rose reminds us of both the sweetness and the power of children’s dreams. This admirable partnership hoped by means of this initiative to send a message of hope to all sick children. For each rose bush sold, 2 euros are paid to the association, in order to perpetuate their action.
This very beautiful rose has also won several awards in the context of the Grand Prix de la Rose. This year it won the 1st prize, thanks above all to its original scent!”
When I saw this rose at the local garden center, with flowers that read more of a pale pink to my eyes than mauve, then read its name, and smelled its heavenly, lemony-rose fragrance, I knew this little prince had to come home with me.
Rose Le Petit Prince; or La Rose du Petit Prince.
One of the most famous passages in Le Petit Prince describes the little prince’s leave-taking from the fox he has tamed, at the fox’s own request:
“Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”
And the roses were very much embarassed.
“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you–the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.
And he went back to meet the fox.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . .”
“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
Welcome to my garden, Little Prince!
Featured illustrations: from Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery; in public domain in the U.S., still copyrighted in France.
Remember Remember the 5th of November, Gunpowder, treason and…. Roses? This floriferous rose garden certainly has other ideas about a quiet slide into senescence, leaf-drop and rose-hips – these are flower-packed shrubs with more to come. Colour, fragrance aplenty and fresh, clean leaves in abundance. A remarkable display given it really is November and hardly […]
One of my favorite gardening/photography blogs has this lovely post with photographs of roses still blooming in November, many of them the David Austin roses I love. Enjoy!
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Old Herbaceous 