Mike Palmer brings us an uplifting look at roses and explains his top rose growing tips.
It’s a bitterly cold, February day and I’m dreaming of summer and heavily scented, pale pink roses underplanted with drifts of English lavender, bees buzzing noisily, frantically harvesting pollen before floating off on the warm summer breeze. It all sounds too good to be true, but I bring you great news. Keep your rosecoloured spectacles right on the end of your nose, as now is the perfect time to nosey through a catalogue or your preferred online retailer to buy the roses of your dreams. And the good news keeps on coming; if the ground isn’t frozen or waterlogged, roses can be planted right now as bare-root or potted plants.
I’ve been surrounded by roses since I was seven. My parents adored roses; well, they were completely smitten by one particular rose, Rosa ‘Superstar’, a highly scented, double, hybrid tea with luminous, vermillion blooms (it was the seventies!). It was, and still is, great for cutting, but is sadly rather prone to mildew and blackspot, which I’ll touch upon later.
As a self-confessed rose lover, and who wouldn’t be, I’m clearly in extremely good company. As a nation, we’ve kept the rose in our top five of favourite, flowering plants for many years. So, if you’re not already onside, I hope you will soon be with my guide to growing the very best roses, no matter where you live and the size your garden.
A brief rose history:
It is thought that roses were first cultivated in China, going back 5000 years BCE, where they were grown in the imperial gardens of the Chou dynasty, before being introduced into the United Kingdom by the Romans. They’ve since become an integral part of our flora and culture, renowned for their symbolism of love, affection and romance, and I’m all for a bit of romance!
Bare root roses:
So firstly, let’s look at the difference between bare-root and potted roses. Bare-root roses are available from all good garden centres and online rose retailers between October and March. At this time of year they have no flowers or foliage because they’re dormant and are supplied without a pot and with no soil around their roots. Because of this they’re cheaper to buy and transport.
Potted roses:
Potted roses are grown in containers and are available to gardeners all year round. Depending on when you buy them, they may or may not come with foliage and flowers. Because they’re grown in compost they need to be fed, watered and looked after before they’re sold, so they’re slightly more expensive to buy and post.
Bring me sunshine:
Like us, roses love the sun, needing at least four hours of sunshine per day, and the more, the better. So even in a shady corner of the garden, if you’re able to tick the ‘minimum four hours of sunshine’ box, you��
