Roses

 I grow only old fashioned roses in my garden. I have tried hybrid teas and David Austins but the soil here is very poor (just soil and sand) and these modern roses need a lot of cossetting. The above roses are Ruguosa, Bourbon and Noisette and basically look after themselves. They flower best in the spring but repeat flower through the summer and Autumn. I disregard gardening books advice on planting in full sun as this just bakes them to a crisp. All my roses are planted in half to full shade and have been watered maybe a couple of times this summer. I like to grow climbing rosses as the garden itself is realy a series of courtyards and ground space is limited. I've had to put serious metal supports up on the outside walls of the house as the Early Tea climbers really do get big in Melbourne's climate.
I order bare rooted stock in the winter from a specialist nursery in the Dandenongs. The catalogue arived this week with hundreds of tempting varieties. The old roses have such fantastic names: I have ordered Souvenier de Mme Leonie Viennot, more Mutabilis, Comtessa de Sargosa, Arch duc Joseph and Baronne Henriette de Snoy. I have experimented a little with burying the graft of some of these old roses and it certainly does not seem to do them any harm (the Compicata is climbing into the plum tree). I have started to propogate cuttings so that I can have some of the stronger growers on their own roots. I think the old Wedding Day rambler in the back garden is now doing this for itself; where the long canes hit the ground they are rooting just as the Albertine rose did from the neighbours garden over the back fence. Bothe are "pruned" with the chainsaw.