My rose gardens...

Same here Simon, OH my aching back

The bed has been partly planted out and has progressed/evolved from a Tea only bed to a bit of a mix... has about 6 different Teas in there but also a few other nice shrubs... so is more a shrub rose bed atm... with a border of bearded iris at the moment. I finished weeding about 75% of the rose beds over the weekend... then added a thick layer of mulch... bloody hard work over about an acre of rose gardens. Need another trailer load of mulch I reckon to finish the job off. Need to extend the new Tea bed a little more, put in a stone retaining wall, two lots of steps, and a path and I'll be almost done.

Simon I was trying to put in a tea garden that was just a blackberry bed. Cleared a lot of the blackberries and I don't know if I will win on this one as they grow up from a dry creak. Any way only had a couple of teas so we are putting in some other old roses to fill the bed. So at the moment we call it the old roses bed but over time I hope that it will be only tea's as we get more.

Edited the title to just cover my rose gardens in general because it's meant to be a blog post and the whole place is in a state of 'development'

Planted out my potted Rosa bracteata today on a bend in the driveway along with a Rosa banksiae 'alba plena' up near the laevigata I liberated earlier. This area is pretty wild and unkempt as our driveway is very long and winds through paddocks... the edges are mostly just long grass. It's my hope that the roses will grow large and outcompete the grasses as well give them plenty of room to spread out. They will be kept in check on one side by cattle and sheep and on the other side by my tractor. I re-grade the driveway every few weeks to keep weeds off the drive and to drag the sandy material back up the hill again after it is washed down by the heavy rain and irrigation run-off we get so any rose suckers that develop in this direction will be scrapped off. Down in the back paddock I've started building a 5ft fence around a dead tree I have to keep the goats and alpaca out so I can finally plant gigantea at its base. It's a 10-15m tall dead eucalypt with an excellent support architecture and I'm imagining gigantea will climb it and then consume it. One one side I'll plant gigantea and on the other side I'll plant 'Souvenir de MME Leonie Veinnot', a climbing tea with gigantea in the background that also assumes massive proportions. I hope the two will grow into each other so that when they are both in bloom it will be a nice mix of double peachy pink flowers and large single whites. I think once they are large enough I'll be able to remove the fence and they'll be able to withstand the attention of the goats and alpaca... though the goats tend to ring-bark things.

Dee... I planted out the little 'Sunny South' cutting you gave me today It's planted at the back of a bed so it can get as tall and as large as it wants Looking forward to seeing this one take off.

In the 'Tea Garden' I planted put my little 'Lady Hillingdon' cutting as it is now growing strongly and should continue to do so in the deep red soil. The 'Tea Garden' now has 'St Francis Xavier', 'Francis Dubreuil', 'Safrano', three Indica Major, 'Lady Huntingfield', 'Comtesse de Larbarthe', 'Pegasus', 'Wild Rover', 'Pax', the bush form of 'Cecile Brunner', 'Honorine de Brabant', and Rosa rugosa 'alba' planted in it now... it's deviated from the original Tea only idea but it's a big area so I figured I would change to growing large shrub roses with plenty of room around them so they can achieve their full glory. Each rose has about 10ft around it to fill in... so it should look good once it all fills in.

Tomorrow I need to get stuck into the last remaining 10m² of thigh-high grass at the top of the Tea garden. Along the other side is my dreaded 'bank' and I'll never be able to control the weeds there... it's fully planted out with waratah, banksia, protea, leucadendron, leucospermum, hakea, melaleuca, grevillea, and dryandra so I think I will just leave it and let these proteaceae grow and hopefully begin to out-do the grass... not liking their chances though...

So... busy times ahead... am feeling the pressence of my back again tonight

Carole wrote:Simon I was trying to put in a tea garden that was just a blackberry bed. Cleared a lot of the blackberries and I don't know if I will win on this one as they grow up from a dry creak. Any way only had a couple of teas so we are putting in some other old roses to fill the bed. So at the moment we call it the old roses bed but over time I hope that it will be only tea's as we get more.

Do you want to borrow my goats to clear out the blackberry? I've got one patch of blackberry left that is about 20m long x 10m wide and they have actually started to work their way around the edges and making a significant impact. When it's gone I'll send them up to tackle your lot

Simon I want to come and live in your garden! Not only roses but goats and an Alpaca too!!
Val who is jealous.

Goats are a pain in the butt Val. The alpaca are great... but those goats...

When I left school I went to a smallholding to learn animal husbandry. The whole thing was a scam, but I got to be in charge of 8 free-ranging goats and I loved them. Alpacas are so sweet, they remind me of Walt Disney characters! (Must be the eyelashes!)

Simon, my son who lives not far from here has 66 acres and rears boer goats. He sells them to the Malaysian government as breeding stock. He probably has a few hundred goats on the farm, and incidently, they're not bad eating !! At one stage we brought home some goat manure and oaten hay to put on a garden and the stink was that bad we had to bury it quick before we all choked here !!

Goat is great tucker

this is why I can't seem to get my hands clean or walk straight anymore

Bed 1. Almost finished this one... need to extend it a little to give 'Vivid' a little more room up the end, get more groundcovers established, add another layer of mulch, and vanquish the last of the twitch in this bed.



Bed 2: The biggest bed... I'm currently widening it to about 10m wide right down to the fenceline. Photo 1 is looking down towards the house, photo 2 is looking back up towards the chook shed. This bed is about 50m long by 10m wide at it's widest point. I'm fighting a losing battle against the weeds in this bed atm... it's like the harbour bridge... once you finish painting at one end you need to start again at the opposite end... it takes me three trailer loads of mulch to cover this bed.



Bed 3: Was looking really good but looks pretty ordinary at the moment... heavy rain over winter washed half of it away... I haven't had time to get in and fix it yet... looking forward to Climbing Cecile Brunner covering the rose seat.



There is another bed of climbers I haven't photographed yet because I can't get to it the grass is so long and scattered individual specimens all over the place. Will photograph the gigantea/climbing tea enclosure tomorrow... had to build a fence around the tree I want them to climb up to keep the goats and alpaca out.

The large bed that was to be the new Tea bed is in front of the house and I haven't photographed it yet either... it will require a bit more work first LOL

Great photos Simon. Your garden is shaping up very nicely.It is going to look very pretty when all the roses come into bloom. But for the life of me I don't know how you find the time to accomplish all that you do.

I don't get a lot of time to do things Dee... I just do what I can when I can... it's a 20 year plan

What a beautiful place Simon - can just imagine it in a few years time! Reminds me of some lines I memorised years ago when I was trying to carve out a garden on our 3 acres: "Space, in a good garden of green air, is fraught with the curves and corners of years of thought" (and hard work LOL) We'll look forward to more photos.

Looking great Simon, certainly looks isolated and tranquil