If there was to be one plant you should have in your garden it should possibly be a rose. They come in wide variety of shapes and sizes from a small patio rose to a vigorous climber. They offer beautiful flowers from May until the last frost. Elizabeth Sawday from Apuldram Roses came to speak to the Society about how to grow roses and gave simple and straightforward advice on how to produce the best possible plants and blooms.
This will be very helpful if you are thinking of entering a rose or two in our Summer Show. If you have never ventured to do so before, there is a novice class for first time entries. In some classes you just need a single bloom. You just send in an entry form and then cut your roses the afternoon before or the morning of the show and bring them along to The Hayling College. We have everything you need to enter your rose(s) and show it to its best advantage and help and advice is always on hand. Another class to try is simply a jam jar of mixed flowers. The choice and range of classes can be found on www.hihs.org.uk.
Roses are greedy and thirsty plants and need good nutrition and plenty of water. A feed of blood, fish and bone and a good mulch is best overwinter and then a special rose feed in April and after the first flowering. They also need pruning to keep the plants healthy and we should not be afraid to cut them back, as it is not possible to kill off a rose by pruning! The old adage is to prune to knee height in Autumn and to ankle height in Spring! Now is the time to get out into your garden to hard prune your roses, except for your ramblers which should be pruned in autumn as they flower on the previous season’s growth. If in doubt about the type of rose you have it is a safe bet to prune back by up to a half of their growth at this time. With climbing roses try and train them horizontally and then new growth will sprout vertically and will produce an abundance of flowers. One overlooked category of roses are ground cover roses which are very hardy and robust – one excellent variety is “Flower Carpet Pink”. Elizabeth was keen to advocate the purchase of bare root roses in Autumn rather than more established roses available from Spring. Full details on the talk can be found on our website with information on year round rose care.
Please start thinking about your entries for our Summer Show – it has classes not just for flowers and vegetables, but cookery, handicrafts, photography, floral art and of course classes for our budding junior horticulturalists! It is fun to enter and you can win prizes. We have special class this year for a flowerpot person – those of us who can remember the TV show ‘Bill and Ben The Flowerpot Men’ will know what to do!