Sorry, I know I promised to post about Tulips combinations to hide their foliage but the roses are beginning to flower and are filling the garden with their perfume; I just have to share them with you.
I have to admit that in England, where every Italian thinks they must be perfect, I was never very successful with roses. Here is different; they grow more quickly, have the long hot summer for their ‘wood’ to harden’ and dry summers that don’t encourage black spot or other fungal-type diseases. They do begin to flower early, last year some began at the end of March. This year it was mid-April when the first buds opened especially for GBBD. Now Rosa mutabilis is full of colour and on still days gives off a delicious perfume.
R. mutabilis
They are forming a hedge between the drive where we park and the vegetable garden.
These images are the end of April. Next into flower were R. Conrad F Meyer and R. Stanwell perpetual. Both are in the Triangular Rose bed that links into the walled bed you can see above.
R. Conrad F Meyer
Stanwell perpetual opens pale pink but quickly fades to white. This is a very generous rose with masses of blooms over a long flowering season.
R. Molineux also opens early and last year (its first year) surprised me by how long it flowered.
Allium roseum, just opening
The first R. veichenblau, possibly my favourite rose
What is giving me most pleasure at the moment is R. Rimosa (known in the US as climbing Gold Badge and in the rest of the world as Climbing Gold Bunny) it is planted on 4 of the pillars at the front of the house along with Wisteria prolific, which I’m sure you saw in my earlier posts. I choose this rose because at the nursery, when I saw it in mid-September it was flowering right from the base, and that is just what it is doing now, it has even grown taller than I imagined it would and it has linked up to form an arch of roses when I look out of the sitting room or kitchen windows. This too is delicately perfumed.
Looking out at the sheep
Looking down from my bedroom window
Rosa Rimosa
When I planted this rose with the wisteria I did think they might flower together creating a good contrast, but usually the wisteria has more or less finished before the rose comes out. It does make an interesting combination with the Perovskia when it re-flowers in autumn.
The old cliché of the roses around the door
Enough of the roses for now; A friend posted about her alliums this morning and I was surprised that hers, in North Devon, were at exactly the same stage as mine here in Lazio.
Allium Mount Everest in the small island bed
A solitary Allium Schubertii
The garden is the most full and colourful I’ve ever seen or even dreamed it could be! (the downside might be that in autumn many plants will have outgrown their space and need to be moved) but at present I’m just enjoying the show.
The slope with Allium Purple Sensation and European and Californian poppies
You can see a wind sown Verbascum – I’ve never seen one with such large leaves – it will grow as big as the new tree next to it (Persimmon)
To finish and a reminder of the wildlife I love to see in the garden here is a lacewing and 2 blue butterflies doing what butterflies do!
A Daddy Long Legs feeds on a Euphorbia.
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Christina.
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My Hesperides Garden.
