January Roses

Last month I believe I had the least rose blooms ever since we live in this place. There were two reasons for that. One was the weather and the other one was me. We had plenty of gray, dreary days with lots of rain, for Southern California circumstances of course, and it was unusually cold. Both factors are not really supportive of rose flower production. In addition to that I didn't fertilize the roses in the containers properly and when these roses don't get fed they don't bloom. It is that simple! Also usually I try to time the pruning of the roses in containers in a way that when I am done with the last the first one starts to bloom already again. This year I didn't pay attention to that and I can tell you, I regret it. I miss having more roses blooming in containers in the winter time, which makes living in Southern California so special for a Rosarian. Next year hopefully I will do better again.

Anyway, here are the rose blooms that I got in January.

I liked this shot of 'Marie Pavie' best out of all featured in this post. Her dainty flowers are heavy with rain drops, but she still manages to look light and elegant.

Another photo of  'Marie Pavie' growing through the fronds of a pigmy date palm. This rose literally blooms year round in my garden, is very healthy, and always looks beautiful if you deadhead the blooms. Otherwise the flower petals become brown when old and still cling to the rose, which can give it a 'dirty look'.




'Georgetown Tea'. I am always touched by the elegance of the Tea roses. This bloom had trouble opening with the low winter light and she is shaded by some palm trees on top of that. In this photo, I feel you can almost feel her struggle to unfold this lovely flower.




Last photo of a bloom of  'Madame Alfred Carriere' before the pruning. As you can see in the background her leaves are not the healthiest and prettiest anymore, but her flowers are still gorgeous.

'Vi's Violet' is one of my most beautiful miniature roses and she was doing her best to please last month.

 Above is another shot of 'Vi's Violet'.

'Pope John Paul II' here also photographed right after a rain shower.

Above you can see the same bloom a day later. This rose holds up very well to rain for a white rose. The bloom does hardly show any blemishes from the water. 

 Last bloom of 'Grandmother's Hat' for this season, back lit by the morning light.

The blooms of 'Irresistible', another miniature rose, also hold up very well in rain. If you touch them they feel almost a little bit like plastic, which I don't like so much, but this firm petal substance certainly has its advantage in rainy weather.




To my surprise 'Charles Rennie Mackintosh' continued going strong in January. He still resites in a containter, but I have a feeling, that it could also be a quite floriferous rose, once it is in the ground. This photo was taken when the rose was fully hit by the winter sun.




'Charles Rennie Mackintosh' again, but this photo was taken in the morning on a gray overcast day. I love the almost lilac color of the bloom! This is a rose bred by David Austin and like many of his roses, it has the ability to change its color quite a bit depending on the weather conditions. Some people might be not so fond of that, but I like it quite a bit. Each flower holds kind of a surprise how it will look when fully open. In my small garden I like these changes and unpredictability, since it can get a bit boring to see the same rose over and over again.




The last rose in this installment is 'Old Fashinoned Girl', a miniature that has won over my heart and seems to get better and better, since she is planted in the ground not too long ago. She just finished her last flush and she has produced already one new basal cane on which I detected today the first new buds. Yeah!

Quite a few gardens are buried under snow at this time of the year, or it is still very cold, so that many of you only can dream of roses right now, my dear readers. I hope, that especially for those of you where this is true, you enjoyed seeing some roses on my blog.

See you in the garden!

Christina

Parham House and Gardens, England - III

If you missed the first and/or second part of my series of posts about Parham House and Gardens and would like to see them before you read this one, here are the links. If you click on them, they will take you to the previous posts:

Parham House and Gardens, England - I
Parham House and Gardens, England - II

After my husband and I exited the Walled Garden and took a brief rest on a bench, enjoying the views into the open park-like landscape, we explored the part of Parham Gardens that is called the Pleasure Grounds. We only had to walk a little bit further to the left to stumble over this stunning maze. I am used to mazes designed with precisly clipped high hedges, but this was the first time that I have seen a maze layed out with brick flat onto the lawn. I liked it quite a bit. This is certainly a kind of design that would be more doable in a private garden, if you are inclined to attempt to create a maze for your own amusement.

One detail about Parham that was rather striking to me were the ancient very tall specimen trees. This photo illustrates very well how much charm and life they give to this garden. Imagine the maze with only lawn in the background. Wouldn't be quite the same, would it?

As we strolled back to the right through the Pleasure Grounds, we came across this beautiful wisteria. Like almost everything in this part of the garden is was quite big and had a lovely urn placed to its side to keep it company.

I feel that every grand estate needs a pond or lake and sure enough Parham had its own. In this case the lake was quite large and had the most vivid fish that I have ever encountered. They were jumping out of the water and sloshing it with their fins as if they had spring fever. It was quite a spectacle. To my understanding the "see-through" wall had no other purpose than being a decorative element in the garden design.

Looking back to the Walled Garden you see the "see-through" wall from the other side again, flanked by two wisterias with urns on the outer sides. I always find that symmetry brings harmony and peace to a garden and has immediately a calming effect on me.

Close-up of the wistera. It was quite a beautiful variety. I am not a wisteria expert, but it looked special to me.

Close-up of one of the urns flanking the wisteria. What a wonderful piece!

This part of the garden had such a wonderful romantic feel to it. I could have spent a whole day here just listing to the sounds of nature and enjoying the views.




Tall trees were spending refreshing shade.

On the way back to the walled part of the garden our path led us up these charming stairs.

Re-entering the Walled Garden we had a lovely view of a long double border, again! The size of the border was just striking.

As I mentioned in an earlier post about Parham, there were a lot of statues well placed throughout the gardens. This putto caught my eyes,...

.... he was in good company by another beautiful one placed close by. I absolutely would love to have something similar in our garden.

On the inner side of the Walled Garden there were flower beds planted at the foot of the impressive walls. Here they grew blue iris together with a white flowering clematis. This bed is striking in its simplicity!

Lovely vessels were placed into the beds. I wonder what function, other than being decorative, they once had. The contrast between the airy light yellow flower stalk and the organic form of the vessel with the dark patina is just pure pleasure for the eyes.

This is the Wendy House, build in 1928, a playhouse for children build into the wall. My husband peeking out of the door gives you an idea about the size. Inside there was a fireplace and a staircase that led to a second story. Quite cute and certainly special for the children, who had an opportunity to play in it!

In the next and final post about Parham I will show you more pictures from the inside of the Walled Garden and a lovely pelargonium collection displayed in an old greenhouse.

See you in the garden!

Christina

Parham House and Gardens, England - II

Today I will continue my series of posts about Parham House and Gardens in England, which my husband and I visited in May last year. If you would like to view my first entry about this gorgeous estate please click on the link Parham House and Gardens, England - I and it will take you there.

In this post I would like to focus mainly on the plants that I saw around the area of the fruit tree meadow and another huge double border. There were many of them that looked so beautiful, lush, and healthy, I just wanted to transplant them to my own garden right away.




I was completely smitten with these beautiful blue flowering plants. I assume they are the famous English bluebells that you can find blooming in masses in England in early spring. In this garden there was only a small patch of them and they were beyond their peak, but still so lovely to look at.

The contrast between the white flowering shrub and the old stone wall is quite attractive, don't you think?

The peonies were almost done, but there was one sumptuous red variety that still had some of its gorgeous flowers left.

The simple beauty of the lichens on the old fence post, which was part of the fence surrounding the fruit tree area, was quite fascinating to me.

 
I assume, that for many of my readers aquilegias are very common plants and therefore there is nothing special about them, but they are very hard to grow here in Southern California, I guess because our climate is too hot and dry, so I can still get quite excited about them. This one has found a nice niche to live in by a wood fence post close to a fruit tree.

Check out this very charming mixture of plants. Usually I feel that lilac and clear red don't go so well together, but I think the alliums with the tulips are forming a quite interesting color contrast.

A simple but very alluring plant - at least to me.

And then there was this plant, which totally blew me away. I asked a gardener, who was working in a bed close by and she told me the precise name. I jotted it done on a small piece of paper and, of course, I lost it. As far as I remember it was an ornamental artichoke, but I might be wrong. If anyone recognizes this plant can you please leave a comment on my blog? The plant had a wonderful effect in the bed where it was growing, but I also can see it being an extraordinary companion plant to white roses, if you have the space for a companion plant this big, that is.

Here is a shot of a part of the second double long border that we saw. Roughly in the middle of it, on the left side, you can see the big silvery leafed plant that I showed you in the photo above. I think this photo gives you a better idea of how huge this plant really is. The border is equally impressive size-wise and they actually used this plant repeatedly, even though you can't see it in this image, because it shows only a limited part of the beds.
I am sure, that as the season was progressing, there will be a lot more in bloom in this border. I would have loved to see what color scheme, if any, they have chosen for these humongous beds. 

Can't help myself and have to show you one more of the silvery leafed plants. I think it is such an incredible beauty and an eye catcher as well. By the way, I love the putto in the background!

This is one of the old fruit trees I believe. How artfully they have espaliered it!

 More lovely alliums together with my favorite silvery leafed plant.

While my husband is still standing hesitantly in one of the exits of the walled garden - it was quite hot and humid that day and he was a little tired - I had already slipped past him in my ongoing excitement into another area of the gardens. Even tough I was a bit tired myself, I couldn't resist to explore the more informal park-like landscape, that was opening up in front of us.

We decided to take a brief rest on this bench in front of the beautiful statue and then continued to check out the vast parts of the estate that we still hadn't seen, yet. I will post about it another time!

See you in the garden!

Christina