SAYING GOODBYE TO ROSES

I realise it's a month since I posted anything about my garden.  The truth is, I've reached a crossroads with it, a quandary.  I have a permanent case of vertigo, as some might already know, and it's quite hard enough gardening without having to constantly battle with the weather and fight pests and diseases.  While I love roses with a passion and can manage pruning if I am careful, I do find having to deal with millions of aphids a, well, pest (no exaggeration - there can be hundreds of the little red or green suckers on just one rose bud). They even attacked my stalwart row of trouble-free yellow Arthur Bell roses this year and that's a first although I could not, yet, bring myself to remove Arthur Bell which is too beautiful for words and maybe the attack was a one off.  I live in hope!





Aphids on a rose

Aphids leave a sticky residue to which spores of mildew fungus can find a home.  Then there is the dastardly rust disease and black spot which cause leaves to fall.  Really, it's all too much but if a rose remains healthy and relatively trouble-free, I will, naturally, keep it.



Already I have removed the three patio roses (Carefree Days, Ruby Ruby, and Sweet Wishes) which had no fragrance and didn't quite come up to expectations in the long run.  One, Ruby Ruby, started growing really tall, Sweet Wishes had blooms that looked quite horrible as they aged and sort of shrivelled up rather than dropping petals, and Carefree became full of blackspot and dropped its leaves. 



I cannot keep spraying for pests and diseases (I have to think of wildlife such as honey bees and Bumble bees to think about as well as Alfie, my resident Ragdoll cat) and while I did try to let natural predators of aphids do their job, I can only say that I am glad I wasn't paying them. 

Alfie, my resident Ragdoll cat

Troika which never really fitted into the colours of the border and grew straight up like a climber; the glorious climbing Iceberg; and Prima Ballerina have also gone.  Prima Ballerina began sporting the oddest coloured roses and changed its growth habit and poor Iceberg which was lovely this year (it was really heartbreaking to chop that down), was forever full of aphids and blackspot.  I am eyeing the rest of the roses with secateurs at the ready and thinking of fabulous, trouble-free shrubs that can, and will, replace them.  My mind goes back to a previous garden, my favourite garden, that I created in the 80s.  Yes, it had roses but mostly it was trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants.  I want that back again, albeit in miniature now that my garden is so much smaller.  No pond, of course, but the calm, peaceful essence of it.

Calm and peaceful garden created in the 80s