Garden Tour: Roses, Verbena Bonariensis, Bearded Irises and more...

I am traveling again and hardly have any time to blog, but I wanted at least to put up a new Periscope video that I recorded about one and a half weeks ago, so that you can follow the developments in my garden.

The focus of the video is on roses that were blooming at that time, but I am also checking on other plants that I have recently planted in my garden. I will be talking about which of these plants have become successes, but also about a few that disappointingly failed in my garden.

In terms of the roses you will see the particular beautiful blooms of rosa 'Scepter'd Isle', rosa 'Grandmother's Hat', rosa 'Yolande d'Arragon' and others. I hope you got interested and come with me for a tour of my garden. To get started, please click the video below.

Thanks for watching! I am curious, what was your favorite rose featured in this video? If you can spare the time, please leave a comment and let me know.

See you in the garden!

Christina

Summer Solstice Garden Tour Video

Just a few hours ago I did another Periscope broadcast about some plants (mainly roses) in our backyard. I am featuring my Hybrid Perpetual Bed with two lovely chartreuse colored plants, a coleus and a heuchera. Then I move on to gardenia 'Veitchii', the Tea Rose 'Georgetown Tea', the Tea Noisette 'Madame Alfred Carriere' and 'Belinda's Dream'. Lastly I show you the Hybrid Tea rose 'Moonstone'. The latter is blooming incredible today! Maybe you would like to have a peek into my garden on this hot summer solstice day!

You can watch the broadcast on Periscope 24 hours after it was taken. My Periscope/Twitter username is csgardendreams.

The video is also on YouTube, just click here:

Wishing you all a beautiful beginning of summer!

See you in the garden!

Christina 

March Roses

Overall March was a difficult month for the roses. We had already heatwaves that early in the year, which led to many roses not developing their gorgeous big spring flower shapes that I am used to see in previous years. Also many rose varieties couldn't deal with these high temperatures and their petals started to crisp.

Besides that, thrips have been a huge problem. I don't recall having so much thrip damage on the roses like this spring ever. These sucking insects are causing the rose petals to show ugly brown spots, especially on the edges. Since I am not only gardening organically, but also don't spray my roses to prevent insect damage, I just have to live with things like this and usually I am fine with that, but this year thrips really have been a nuisance.

That being said, I still had many nice roses in March and some rose varieties weren't showing hardly any problems at all. Of course, for an organic rose gardener like me it is utterly important to find the rose varieties that do well in my climate and are even able to deal with especially difficult climate situations like we had this March.

If I would have to give a price away for the best rose last month, it would go to 'Pope John Paul II'. What you see on the photo above is just one spray on a new basal cane. This rose is just gorgeous!

The same spray a little bit more open. Love it! The fragrance is heavenly, too. 

This was the very first bloom on 'Grandmother's Hat'. A very healthy Hybrid Perpetual rose with lovely matte green foliage. 

You can see 'Grandmother's Hat' to the very right with her first bloom really standing out. The other two Hybrid Perpetual roses in this bed, in the middle 'Reine des Violettes' and to the left 'Yolande d'Aragon, are very much behind 'Grandmother's Hat' in terms of their flowering time. 

The blooms of 'Grandmother's Hat' vary greatly in color. In cool weather they are a much darker pink than in warm weather, were the color of the flower fades quickly to a much lighter and paler pink. I like this rose in all color stages, though.

Here you can see that 'Grandmother's Hat' really got going and just a few days after I photographed her first bloom there were many more flowers open on the bush.

Depending in what stage you catch the flowers of 'Grandmother's Hat', they may show their warm yellow stamens, which I find quite charming.  

Here is a shot of one of the first blooms of 'Pierre de Ronsard' taken early in the morning. This rose has such a romantic quality. I am always fascinated by it.

'Old Fashioned Girl' is a very reliable, floriferous miniature rose in my garden. On this picture she just started to bloom.

This is a relatively "new to my garden" Hybrid Tea rose that I am really excited about. I love lavender colored roses, but good ones are hard to come by. I bought 'Neptune' based on positive reviews that I read on an internet rose forum and have to say I am not disappointed. I like that the rose is lavender colored, but with a cerise blending. The reverse is cerise and the petals edging can be cerise as well. This coloration makes a very interesting looking bloom. The flowers have been big, very fragrant and of good form so far.

Here is the same bloom of 'Neptune', but fully open. The flower has much faded into a more clear lavender in comparison to the previous photo. When this rose was blooming, it was very hot and if you look closely, you can see that the edges of the rose petals are slightly crisped. The rose bush is still relatively small and hasn't taken the transplant from a two gallon pot to a big terracotta container very well. I am really curious what it will be doing in the future and can't wait for the next flush of blooms.

For a comparison: This is 'Sweetness', my other lavender Hybrid Tea rose. It is always a clear lavender color and is also very pretty in my opinion.

'Our Lady of Guadalupe' is blooming her head of, heat or not. But this rose can have a very elegant flower form, which wasn't the case in this year's spring flush due to the heat.

I started this post with a white rose and will end it with another (almost) white one. This is a cluster of 'Marie Pavie' hanging into my walkway to the front door. I always love her dainty blooms.

Hope all of you have a good week ahead of you!

See you in the garden!

Christina

February Roses

February seems to be already such a long time ago, but I still want to post a recap of what happened in my garden in terms of the roses, as I do for each month. As usual for that time of the year rose blooms were sparse, but I still got some nice flowers from the roses living in containers and one rose planted into the ground, my 'Climbing Iceberg', decided February was the new spring and produced a whole, albeit mediocre rose flush.

This year I was particularly late pruning and fertilizing my roses. Normally I start these tasks in the beginning of December and I am done with them by the end of January. And even though this year I also started pruning in December, I only finished it by the end of February (our new dog takes up a lot of garden time, you know...). To be honest with you, I didn't even get to all of the roses in containers, some are still untouched, which is a shame.

In prior years I pruned a rose and immediately fertilized it with organic fertilizer, but this year I gave some roses a longer time to rest before I put fertilizer down. The idea behind it was to allow the roses to rejuvenate instead of encouraging them immediately to leave out and produce new buds again, after a very tough year 2014 with all the heat and drought that the roses were going through.

I think that was a very serious mistake, since to me it looks like the organic fertilizer was not broken down by microorganisms and available to the roses when they started to leave out at their own leisure. I have the impression that in my poor soil this way the roses were starving, when they needed food to be able to produce new leaves and set buds properly. Lesson learned: Next year I am going back to my old way, again!

Let's have a look at some photos that I took last month.

As it is common each month, there was one rose that stood out with its beauty in February in my garden, was kind of the star of the crowd, and that was 'Captain Christy'.

This is a relatively rare early Hybrid Tea rose, bred by Francois Lacharme (France, 1873).

The parents of this rose are 'Victor Verdier', a Hybrid Perpetual, also bred by Lacharme in 1859 and 'Safrano', a lovely Tea rose, bred by Beauregard in 1839. Considering his parents 'Captain Christy' is a first generation Hybrid Tea rose. It is kind of exciting to me to own a rose of that era in rose breeding history.

'Captain Christy' looks very different in comparison to the modern Hybrid Tea rose from nowadays and for me certainly radiates a very special charm.

The light pink delicate large flowers with the darker pink center are of exquisite beauty. I am so happy that this rose is blooming for me again, since I almost lost it last year due to the very hot summer.

Many roses planted in the ground where already setting buds in February, which is kind of early in my garden, like for example this very healthy 'Chandos Beauty' Hybrid Tea rose.

As I mentioned in my intro to this post, 'Climbing Iceberg' was the first rose in my garden that started to produce a spring flush. The rose didn't leave out fully and the flush wasn't a profuse one, though. On top of that unfortunately the 'Climbing Iceberg' was already plagued by powdery mildew. So altogether not the most prettiest sight and I prefer to just show you one bloom and leave it at that!

Another rose growing in a container that delighted me with its blooms was 'Charles Rennie Mackintosh', an English Rose bred by David Austin, United Kingdom 1988.

I just love the cupped, old-fashioned bloom form and how the color fades to a lilac pink as the blooms gets older. This is the only rose that I know off, that does that to this extend.

'Rhodolugue Jules Gravereaux' in my eyes is an incredible beautiful Tea rose,...

...that was giving me some early blooms in February as well.

I love this rose also in the faded stage, shortly before the petals drop. 

The picture above was taken during the time when I was fertilizing my roses. The rose to the right of the pygmy date palm is 'Pierre de Ronsard' and to the very left, partly hidden by the dolly with the fertilizer bag, is 'Belinda's Dream'. The gray, yellow stuff at the feet of the roses is the fertilizer, a combination of biostart and alfalfa meal. You can see that 'Pierre de Ronsard' is leaving out sparsely, which unfortunately seems to be an ongoing theme with almost all my roses this spring.

The flower bed above, for some unknown reasons, I think I have never shown on my blog so far. It was originally inhabited by a pygmy date palm, which grew so big, that it is was obstructing the view from our family living room into the garden. The palm was removed and the stump was grinded and then I planted the shell pink 'Heritage' there, another David Austin rose. In the background I have placed some calla lilies, zantedeschia aethiopica, which have grown in nicely, but haven't bloomed much this winter. As evident on the photo, 'Heritage' also has some trouble to leave out properly.

This image shows my Hybrid Perpetual Bed, containing from the left to the right 'Yolande d'Aragon', 'Reine des Violettes' and 'Grandmother's Hat'. Obviously the first two roses have problems to leave out fully as well, only 'Grandmother's Hat looks pretty decent, almost completely clothed in new leaves.

Here I am presenting a close-up of 'Grandmother's Hat's foliage. The leaves are so healthy, for me it is a joy just to look at the foliage itself. Many roses had problems with powdery mildew and rose rust already last month, but 'Grandmother's Hat' could successful fight of the ugly fungi with bravery.

Zooming in even closer, here are the first of the many buds of 'Grandmother's Hat', showing a nice color at the time I took the photo, even though it was only February. I can already give away that 'Grandmother's Hat was the second rose to produce a spring flush in my garden. I didn't get disappointed with her like with the above mentioned 'Climbing Iceberg' rose, but this is something for another post.

A rose that also showed great promise last month was 'Auckland Metro'. Here is a cane with a bud. You can see for yourself how healthy and robust the new leaves are.

Lastly a bud of 'Neptune', a lavender Hybrid Tea rose, even though it doesn't look much lavender in the bud stage.

Here is the same bloom of 'Neptune', just a little bit further in the opening process. It continued to develop into a huge beautiful lavender colored bloom in the beginning of March, which I intend to show you when I blog next time about my March roses.

I am wishing everyone a happy spring!

See you in the garden!

Christina

Some more from the Rose Spring Flush

Unfortunately for the last couple of weeks due to professional and personal reasons I had to completely neglect the blog, and I apologize for that, but I am happy to be back now!

The rose spring flush has been glorious this year and I have literally taken thousands of photos, but sadly I didn't have the time to sort though them and put up a blog post to share them with you, dear readers. My husband and I are now on vacation and I used my first chance to work on this post. So with no further ado, here are some more shots from this years rose spring flush.

'Charles Darwin' is a very lovely and healthy light yellow rose in my garden,...

...which blooms open almost always to a perfect form. 

The off-white flowers of 'Marie Pavie' never fail to touch my heart. Above: Just beginning to open...

...and later, on a very hot day, the flowers are partly tattered, but wonderfully perfumed and to me they still radiate dignified elegance.

'Grandmother's Hat' to the right at her peak (to the left you can see 'Reine des Violettes'). I love how she was looking untamed and wild-romantic this year. She has never flowered that opulent for me as this spring.

A few close-ups of 'Grandmother's Hat': Her flowers can vary greatly in color. They can appear in a very soft pastel pink...

...or in a much more saturated, intense pink.

However they turn out, I think, they are always lovely. 'Grandmother's Hat' was one of my absolute favorite roses this spring!

'Reine des Violettes' has one of the most amazing color out of all of my roses. It can be called a grayish violet and I adore how the petals unfold in an almost unruly but fascinating way. The color is very hard to capture for me with my camera, but the photo above comes close. Unfortunately, the bush itself is not such a joy to look at. So far it is a little bit puny, even though the rose is the third year in my garden.

'Sweetness' has become an impressive five by five feet bush in my front yard. It astounds me that it is doing so well despite the fact that it is growing in very close proximity of a tall 'Queen Palm'. But the moment I don't fertilize or water it enough it goes downhill. I really have to watch it!

A single bloom of 'Sweetness'.

A nice spray of 'Old Fashioned Girl'. I am really thankful that this rose is doing so well despite the fact that it is growing in front of a white heat reflecting South-West facing wall. 

My second 'Pierre de Ronsard' aka 'Eden' in the backyard. It just came into its own, when my other one was way over her peak.

The very full blooms of 'Pierre de Ronsard' are always a joy to look at!

Depending on how hot it is, the color changes from a cool pink (see photo of multiples flowers further above) to a more warm almost apricot pink like on the image directly above. 

'Iceberg' growing through an obelisk in a big container. A rose that is mostly pretty and blooms generously in Southern California, but can get powdery mildew badly in my garden. This is an own-root growing specimen, which has been mildew-free this spring.

'Yolande d'Aragon' another particularly opulent rose with a great fragrance. 

This rose, 'Madame Alfred Carriere', just comes into its own. We planted it into the ground last year in July, I believe, and it started to flower more generously this spring and also the size of the blooms has increased. It is supposed to be a very vigorous climber and I am expecting great things from this rose in the future.

Almost always an immaculate white Hybrid Tea rose in my garden: 'Pope John Paul II'.

'Moonstone' produces very big, gorgeous flowers, which are good for cutting and last a long time in the vase and yet, the rose drives me crazy. It is the most disease ridden bush that I have in my garden (mainly rust and powdery mildew) and I am seriously debating with me to get rid of it for that reason.

Here is a whole bush shot of 'Moonstone', when it was in full swing this spring. You really can't see the powdery mildew that much on this picture, but believe me, it is there! The rust occurred a little later after I took this photo. 

Besides being so sickly, the rose still manages to flower, even though flowering is definitively impaired. One good thing is, that it is planted across the pool, so usually no one visiting the garden can come up close enough to see the ugly mess of leaves. 

'Our Lady of Guadalupe' is usually one of the first roses to bloom in spring in my garden. But this year she was one of the last and started when it was time to deadhead the spring flush of other varieties. I pruned her very late and that postponed her blooms quite a bit.  

The spring flush is long over by now and some of the roses were approaching their second flush, when we had to part for our vacation in Devon, England. As much as I love going on vacation, it is always hard for me to leave the garden alone. I am sure many of you keen gardeners out there can completely relate to this!

Hopefully it won't take that long until I get to post next time. It will be for sure be something about our England trip. I would be happy, if you could come back and pay me another visit soon.

See you in the garden!

Christina