Lettuces

This year the lettuces have been quite successful.

I sowed Little Gem and Navarra (curly, red-tinged leaves) in trays in the greenhouse.

Mainly because of lack of space in the veg plots I decided to plant out the seedlings into some green troughs which had held bulbs and winter flowers.  I have to say that apart from a couple of complete losses of the small plants right at the start they have grown well and provided the kind of small young tender lettuces we like.

I came across this article about an experiment the RHS did to test out theories about popular anti-slug remedies. .

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45652170

Their conclusion is that none work - but that growing lettuces in pots reduced the damage. That's definitely my experience. I think that with the very dry summer the plastic troughs helped to retain moisture and it was easier to water them anyway.

I did two batches this year and both have worked well so will definitiely do this again next year. I may try and keep some going in the greenhouse during the winter.

See also "Do slugs drink beer?" July 2016 post >>

Weed lady!

I have found a fellow gardener of my own heart! She seems to have produced a catalogue and encyclopaedia of our garden at  www.gardenwithoutdoors.org.uk/weed_guide.

This lady takes photos of suspected weed seedlings and records them as they grow and flower, and she takes cuttings of weeds!

I found her website when trying to identify a horrible climbing weed that has appeared in our hedge. terrified it was knotweed - but turns out to be black bryony. Not so terrifying but nasty and apparently poisonous, so it's on to the bonfire for that nasty.

Do slugs drink beer?

I'm not a big beer drinker, I usually prefer a glass of red wine. However, last weekend I partook of a can of John Smith's - but didn't finish it.

While inspecting the sorry butternut squash plants with munched leaves and buds I remembered someone telling me about using a dish of beer to catch slugs. Waste-not-want-not as they say - so I Googled "slug beer traps" and came up with a few suggestions. I found one website Garden Myths www.gardenmyths.com/how-to-get-rid-slugs-with-beer/ run by Robert Pavlis, who lives in southern Ontario. He's been gardening for many years and dedicates his website to exploring the validity of various gardening myths. In the case of SLUGS he set up various beer traps and videoed the night-time goings on. (Take a look - it's a hoot!). Bottom line - slugs like beer, take a sip and carry on with their nightly munching, occasionally one has a sip too many and falls in and dies happy. But as a serious strategy for getting rid of slugs beer is a failure. Robert recommends enjoying your beer yourself (perhaps to drown your sorrows over the depredations of your precious plants by garden pests).

Two other myths he investigated which caught my eye:

• Removing the bottom leaves of tomato plants and 
• The benefits of weed barrier membranes

My Mum used to cut off leaves of the tomatoes on the basis that they take the goodness from the fruit. And I've read accounts of tomato growers who cut ALL the leaves off once the fruit has set. My feeling is that leaves are where the plant generates it's energy - using photosynthesis - and removing them just reduces the amount of sugar available to the fruit. Only reason for cutting off leaves is so you can actually see the fruit to harvest them. (My 9 tomato plants are a small jungle!).

Alicante tomatoes in the greenhouse

As for weed barriers - well we've tried them and they fail in similar ways to what Robert found. Weed seeds blow in and settle on the top and get established quickly, couch grass, bindweed and ground elder just run underneath and come up several feet further along. Same applies, only worse, to gravel paths and beds.

I think a lot of perceived wisdom (or myths) about gardening are perpetuated by people just following what other people say, what there hear on the TV or read in books. Those experts don't know your garden and your environment. And a lot of them are professionals. Creating an instant garden at Chelsea or landscaping for a newly built house is different from managing a productive garden yourself year in year out. Also some of the rules that farmers or commercial growers use are bound to be different. For example, cutting raspberries right down each year - it makes it easier to harvest so they don't mind losing the early crop, which this year has been amazing for us. One of the delights of gardening is working with your own patch and finding your own balance. 

Beans - and gone!

Yesterday we had our first meal of 2016 Broad Beans.

We had some broad bean tops a week or so ago, which are lovely - a bit like spinach but not so watery. Picking the growing shoots once sufficient flowers and beanlets are forming below, deters black-fly (though not many aphids this year, probably don't like all the rain), keeps the plants from getting too leggy and provides a nice meal for us humans. Yesterday I picked a dozen or so biggish pods and we had them with our roast chicken, accompanied by home-grown spuds. The potatoes are Kestrels which I planted up in big tubs back in February. They've done very well, completely bug and worm-free and very welcome before the ones in the veg bed are ready.

First Broad beans of 2016

The bad news is the climbing French beans. This year I tried a different variety - Cobra. They germinated well in their pots in the greenhouse and I was full of expectation planting them out in their wigwams - about 36 nice plants. But they just wouldn't climb. Only one threw a shoot that wound around the pole, the rest just stood there and sulked. I gave them some extra feed - chicken pellets - but no joy. I could see one or two had been eaten, the stems were bitten right through and the leaves just lay there. I came to the conclusion that slugs were the culprit. So I spread a bit of sandy ash from the bonfire, on the basis slugs don't like sharp bits on their feet. No joy - no beans, although a few mauvish flowers right down at ground level. Maybe pigeons or pheasants were to blame.

So I decided to pot up some more bean seeds in the greenhouse. After 2 weeks of warm weather nothing but one very tiny bean shoot emerged. I turned out the pots and found NO BEANS! So probably slugs, maybe mice.

On Sunday morning I woke up and decided to get rid of the French beans outside and plant Chard. Went up the garden to find - NO BEANS AT ALL. Every one of the remaining plants were cropped off at an inch high. So no French beans this year - but Chard is very nice. (Maybe with roast pigeon or pheasant - I'm watching you!)

The runner beans are climbing well and have started putting out bright red flowers, so there's hope there!

Rhubarb de-weeding and re-location

Another busy weekend. 

The rhubarb de-weeding and re-location project moved forward significantly. We completely cleared one of the original two rows, putting rooted rhubarb plants in buckets of water and pots hopefully to survive re-planting. There is room for 3 more in the new row (which used to be the asparagus bed and lately used for sweet peas). Now we have to clear the soil of weeds, especially the dreaded couch grass, add lots of compost and then we can plant back 6 good rhubarb roots in the middle row. We still have some plants in the top row which are producing good and tasty stems for rhubarb pie, crumble or just on its own.

The trouble with couch grass (and bindweed and ground elder) is the roots which can go as much as 12 ins below ground. If you leave even a tiny bit in the soil they start up and invade the patch you've broken your back over clearing.  So we've put in some barriers beween the cleared bits and the still-infested. We had some panels of old polycarbonate conservatory roofing which were just the right length and depth. (Never throw anything away!)

Clearinf the rhubarb patch - polycarbonate conservatory roof panels divide the clear soil from the still-infested.

View across the veg beds - young marrows, squashes, potatoes and broad beans in the near bed.

Winter update

The strange weather is continuing. It's been more normal winter with some frosts and a few flakes of snow, but interspersed with heavy rain and winds. But spring is creeping nearer and the daffodils are starting to brighten things up. The soil is still pretty wet, although last weekend I managed to finish digging over the old asparagus bed. Since Christmas it's either been horribly wet and heavy or frozen.

"Digging over" is a bit of a euphemism. It's been shifting and sifting networks of couch grass roots, old asparagus roots, buttercups and dandelions. I also discovered a large colony of horseradish. There are patches all over the garden which I plunder from time to time to make horseradish sauce from the roots. But it's pretty invasive. The huge roots spread and it seeds if you're not quick enough to dead-head the pretty white flowers. Had to dig really deep to try to remove it - but like dandelions, a little bit of root left in will generate a nice big plant in a couple of months.

This bed is going to be a new rhubarb bed. The existing rhubarb patch (8 plants plus a few off-shoots) are completely infested with couch grass. Every year we try to get rid of it but with only short-term success. The couch grass roots have sharp growing tips, like bamboo, and grow right through the rhubarb roots. So although the rhubarb plants are still producing a reasonable crop there is a definite gradual reduction in quality and quantity.

So the plan is to lift 4 or 5 plants, clean up the roots, and then place them in their new bed. Then dig over and clean up part of the current rhubarb patch and transplant the remaining plants.

So the next job is to shift a barrow or two of compost over and dig into the bed to give the rhubarb a really good feed. The sun is shining now - so I'm getting out in the garden while I can!

Hot garden round-up

Hottest days since 2006 apparently! The last two days have been unbearably hot - the garden thermometer showing 31 C. The tomatoes in the greenhouse have been wilting despite watering twice a day. African violets on the window-sills in the house have got scorched with the sun. I've been out with the hose in the evening to keep the vegetables and salads going and the fruit trees. The apple trees are loaded with small fruit and are at risk if they don't get enough water. I think the last serious rain was two weeks ago and the ground is pretty dry.

Despite the dry weather the broad beans are doing well. We usually have a couple of meals from the top shoots, but this year, after one meal of  bean tops last week, and my advice in my blog post, the black fly have got in there probably boosted by the hot sunshine. Nasty little things and not worth bothering to clean the shoots. Don't think I'd enjoy them wondering if I was going to bite into a bunch of crunchy aphids (although I always say you can't be an organic gardener and a vegetarian!). The blackflies suck the goodness from the plant, especially the small developing beans, so I've given them a good spray with dilute washing-up liquid. They certainly squirmed a bit so hopefully there will be less today.

The French beans have been eaten by something - rabbits, pheasants? but the Runner beans are doing well with plenty of bright red flowers. The lettuces and rainbow chard are still going strong.

The marrows and courgettes and squashes are all doing well now after a shaky start. One of the bought-in courgette plants is producing lots of yellow courgettes so looking forward to tasting them when they are big enough.

We've had to abandon the redcurrants this year - the pigeons have been eating them green. So we've netted one row of blackcurrants and the pigeons have moved on the the second row of blackcurrants. Yesterday 12 pigeons flew up as I walked up the path. The gooseberries are great. We had a gooseberry meringue pie at the weekend and looking forward to gooseberry fool / pie / ice-cream......

Ground elder and bees nest

We have a horrible invasion of Ground Elder. This is creeping in from the adjacent field and despite much pulling and hacking in previous years, and indeed complete digging over of one bed and putting down a plastic membrane, the stuff keeps coming.The roots are worse, if it's possible, than couch grass and bindweed, and it's already going up to flower.

So at the weekend Paul got stuck in again. After half an hour's digging Paul reported a lot of buzzing, angry bees. He'd dug up some herbaceous plants, aquilegias and cornflowers so at first we thought that the bees were cross that their food source had been moved, But they kept coming, hovering just above the soil. Eventually we discovered that we'd disturbed their underground nest. Another small dig with a trowel and there were bees flying out everywhere. So we covered up the entrance hole with some leaves and left them to it  ..... and went on to another patch of Ground Elder, we have lots to choose from!

This morning the bees seemed to be going about their business as usual.

Composting Week

It's International Composting Awareness week! 
Not sure if the timing is someone's quiet joke given it's UK Election week. But it is actually part of the United Nations Year of the Soil - see www.soils.org.uk/international-year-soils-2015-0 - which is raising awareness of the importance of sustainable soil management as the basis for food, fuel and fibre production and essential ecosystems. It's also highlighting the role of soils in adapting to climate change for future generations. So pretty important.

At Froggarts Cottage we take composting very seriously. We have three 6ft square wooden compost bays built on soil and we use them in rotation. So we are using one to put the new vegetable matter in, the second is covered and processing nicely turning it over every couple of months and the third, now full of pretty good stuff, we use for topping up the veg beds, greenhouse and for re-potting things. It takes about 18-24 months to generate good compost for use.

We also have a couple of those "dalek" plastic compost bins which we bought for our previous house (with postage-stamp garden). We use those for rotting down leaves which take longer than other waste. From time to time we'll mix some well-rotted leaves into the main compost.

The only difference I can see between our compost and what you buy in shops is that ours still has weed seeds in. I guess the commercial stuff is heat-blasted to get rid. In fact our compost has a better mix of soil to vegetable matter which makes it better for potting or sowing big seeds like beans. Some of the shop stuff just looks like wood chips.

What do we put in? Grass chippings, weeds (but not couch grass or bind weed which I consign to a fiery end on the bonfire), ashes from the bonfire, trimmings from herbaceous plants and shrubs, vegetable waste from the kitchen, egg-shells, shredded paper, card egg-boxes, toilet roll middles and other light cardboard. Occasionally we get a boost from passing horses or a bag from the local stables.

I do worry that some of the waste from bought-in vegetables may not be too healthy. I never put in potato peelings - there's too many bugs and viruses - and since the allium leaf miner I don't put in onion or leek peelings either. Those bugs may well have come in from foreign farms. Obviously using waste from bought fruit and veg means our compost isn't organic.

There are lots of theories and advice about composting, but generally it all works out OK if you keep it mounded up, not too wet or dry and turn it over every couple of months. Let the bugs, worms and bacteria do the hard work!

Potatoes

Planted up 3 big pots of potatoes - Colleen which are first earlies. They will stay in our unheated conservatory until the growth starts to get big and susceptible to aphids. They are horrid to have in the conservatory and then put them outside where maybe the birds will feast on them

These Colleens are saved from last year's crop. This is something I've done for a few years with Desiree and Sante potatoes. Often that's because if the winter is mild the stored ones are starting to sprout so aren't much good for eating.

However, a couple of years of success the yield has been a bit disappointing. Mind you, the bought ones haven't been brilliant either. (See "Review of the year".)

I had a useful Christmas present book "Collins Pests, Diseases & Disorders of Garden Plants".This is a compendium of all kinds of pest,diseases and disorders of plants, vegetables and trees. You can look things up in two ways - by pest and by plant. So if you look at potatoes it will give a list of all kinds if diseases and also problems that occur from drought, over-watering, soil conditions, etc. and also problems that occur during harvesting and storage.

So the nasty brown cavities in the middle of some of the potatoes, with no sign of ingress by worms, were identified as "hollow heart" caused by alternating dry and wet spells of weather. The book also explains that potatoes are affected by viruses which are transmitted by aphids. The virus damage is limited in the first year but saved potatoes get worse each year with the result of second and third year yield getting poorer and smaller. The seed potatoes you buy are from Scotland or Northern Ireland where the colder weather means fewer aphids and hence less virus infection.

That's been my experience so I shall buy in some new stock this year - Pentland Javelin, Desiree (which generally do well here) and a new one to Froggarts Garden - Kestrel.

On a good note - the potatoes in the pots in the greenhouse which I planted in November are just showing very small shoots. I'll have to cover with fleece to shield from the frost I'm sure we'll be getting during March. (Very mild today.)

Allium Leaf Miner

In report by the RHS into "Top 10 reported pests of 2014" Allium Leaf Miner appears for the first time.  This report appeared today in Horticulture Week with a graphic photo of the damage Allium Leaf Miner does. http://www.hortweek.com/allium-leaf-miner-hits-rhs-top-10-pests/plant-health/article/1334304

We've been plagued for the last 4 years (see previous entry about onion pests) and despite not sowing leeks or onions for a couple of years and covering with fleece its still managed to ravage our leek crop in 2014. I'm wondering if I should dig up all the chives. We have a couple of clumps of chives which seem pretty healthy, and I love to eat the purple flowers in my salad, but maybe they are harbouring the nasty bug.

Apparently this bug first appeared in the UK in the East Midlands so we're in the thick of it. However, I'm a bit jealous of a local allotment-holder who has rows of lovely leeks.

Heritage Orchard

Happy 2015! The weather has been crazy so far - the remains of Boxing Day snow, hard frost interspersed with torrential rain has kept the garden out of bounds - so some additional research (i.e. browsing) time.

Found this Heritage Orchard site www.heritageorchard.co.uk while checking out Leicestershire events for the Coleorton Parish website.   They run various talks and courses related to Leicestershire apple varieties. But their site also has links with mountains of information about vegetables, fruit and potatoes. I will be spending more time there, especially checking the potato varieties and pests section!

Review of the year

New Year's Eve and looking back over 2014 there have been highs and lows with our garden:

Highs

• The greenhouse tomatoes were great. This year I sowed all Alicantes and they gave us consistently delicious tomatoes right through till early November. The green ones ripened on the kitchen windowsill but didn't quite make it till Christmas.
• Raspberries were pretty good, especially the early ones
• Beetroots were spectacular - 2 sowings. Plenty of beetroots for salad and soup.
• The Bramley Apple was loaded with good quality apples. Bramleys are notorious for "one year on one year off" so probably get none in 2015. Have quite a few in store (mice willing) and lots of tubs of cooked apples in the freezer.
• The little Elstar Apple we planted 5 years ago has just got into its stride. Only about 10 apples - but really delicious and seem to keep well.

Not so good:

We had quite a few failures or problems with vegetables:

• Potatoes were generally a bit small. But the biggest problem has been when we have come to used them Some of the Colleens and a few Desirees have nasty brown cavities in the middle. No sign of ingress by worms and generally only the larger potatoes are affected. Looked up on Google and identified this as Hollow Heart - not caused by a bug, bacteria or rot but by rapid changes in growing conditions. Indeed this we had see post http://www.froggartscottagegarden.co.uk/2014/07/hot-potatoes.html. So, in future need to be more rigorous about watering during dry spells.
• Runner Beans sown directly into ground were infested with bean fly so we had to plant a second sowing in pots. These grew well and we had a good crop.
• Broad Beans grew quickly and we had a good crop. But some of the mature beans had brownish markings on the bean. I usually save beans for next year so have picked them over carefully.
• Leeks again suffered with allium leaf miner. Managed to get a few early ones for eating 
• Brussel Sprouts were a disaster. new variety this year and we netted them against butterflies and pigeons, but they didn't thrive and some had big swollen stems with only tiny sproutlets.
• The blackcurrants were completely stripped by pigeons and blackbirds, presumably to spite us because we netted the redcurrants.

Couch grass was everywhere. The rhubarb patch is completely overrun with couch grass actually boring holes through the roots, However much I dug up it was there again a week later. Bindweed seems to have reduced a bit though.

Looking forward now to planning the sowing and planting for 2015.

Allium Leaf Miner

After having had a few good leeks in a lamb casserole a couple of weeks ago I was disappointed that the main crop were looking a bit weedy. They weren't getting fat and started to show bumps and breaks in the stem. So I checked them over - yes the dreaded Allium Leaf Miner again.

For pictures and advice see the RHS site >>

We haven't grown onions or leeks for 3 years to try to clear the soil of pupae but they seem to be endemic now. I planted a second batch of leeks in a different part of the garden and covered them with a fleece tunnel during August & early September when the adult moth is supposed to fly. So far they look OK (need a bit of weeding though).

Leeks - plus chickweed & leaves!

Bean feast

Plenty of produce from the garden now. As well as the fruit trees and raspberries the vegetables are producing in abundance - beetroots, marrows / courgettes, squashes, lettuces and three kinds of beans.

Beetroot, squash, marrow & french beans

Runner beans

We keep bean seeds from one year to plant the next. The runner beans have been saved this way for about 30 years when Mum & Dad moved to their Dorset home and bought a new packet. This year I planted 40 runner bean seeds in a new plot (move the bean frame around each year) and nothing happened. After 3 weeks I dug around and found every bean was infested with little white grubs. Checked internet and think they were probably bean fly. (See Which fact sheet for more details - I'll be following some of their advice next year!) Luckily I had some more bean seeds so I planted them in pots to germinate and grow up a little. (We always used to do this, generally to avoid early frosts and get a jump on the weather in cold springs. It's only in the last few years we've planted straight in the ground.) The planted-out beans then got chomped by slugs but the survivors have grown up well and are giving us a bumper crop.

French beans have done really well this year. I always plant these in pots in the greenhouse because they are more tender than other beans and are only safely planted out at the end of May. However, the germination rate has been about 50-60% using saved seeds and bought seeds - no difference. After the bean fly experience with the runners I took a close look in the pots and there was some evidence of pest at work, though no visible grubs. Some of the non-germinating seeds and ones with just stubby growth had brown marks on the beans. Haven't yet discovered what causes these. Next year I will plant twice as many as we need. The surviving plants - grown up wigwams of bamboo and hazel - have produced in abundance needing to be harvested every day.

Our star performers are the broad beans. In March I planted 30 straight in the ground and 30 in pots with no noticeable difference in germination success, growth rate or productivity. The only problem this year was that they produced beans a plenty during the warm spell and it was difficult to pick and process fast enough. We leave some of the bigger pods to mature and dry off and now I've gathered those and stored the beans in a paper bag ready for next year.

Young broad beans - half grown from seeds planted in the soil and the others in pots and planted out.

Leek Bed

The evenings are getting lighter and today was a lovely warm spring day so I was able to spend a pleasant hour and a half after work hours digging the "leek bed". The leek bed was originally a large greenhouse - which the previous owners took with them leaving a sizeable and well-dug bed surrounded by flag-stones. It's next to the smaller greenhouse which they left behind, so is ideal for salads, beetroots  - and leeks. Mum is very fond of leeks and likes to help with separating the small leeklets grown in the seed tray and hands them to me to drop each one into its own hole made in the soil with an old spade handle. This is pretty tedious work made easier when shared.

Well that's a way off yet. Actually we haven't been able to grow leeks for a few years because we suffered from the dreaded Alium Leaf Miner. Our leeks, onions and shallots were going rotten in the ground and eventually we discovered little white larvae and horrid brown pupae. These can live in the soil and emerge as moths to infest the nexy year's crop. So we decided to give the onion family a miss for a few years. We're going to try again this year.

Our leek bed kitchen garden during early summer

Flutter-bies

The sunny summer weather has brought out the butterflies in thousands. The garden is all a-flutter with the lavender, marjoram and buddleias particularly popular. We've seen all colours - white with black wing-tips, orange wing-tips, brown, peacocks, tortoiseshells and a comma.

Of course these lovely creatures start off as voracious caterpillars which strip the leaves off anything.

Last year the rose round the front door was devastated by little stripey caterpillars. Each year small green/grey grubs completely strip the leaves of the Solomon's Seal after the flowers have finishes. We have self-sown tall yellow mulliens around the vegetable plots at the top of the garden which are host to hundreds of yellow and black striped caterpillars.

Unfortunately some butterflies are very fond of brussel sprouts. We have put nets over them to keep off the pigeons and pheasants but the butterflies have got in. So this evening I spent an hour on hands and knees squishing little green grubs and yellow and grey eggs. Not nice.

EU ban on pesticides

"Bee deaths: EU to ban neonicotinoid pesticides"

See story and background info in BBC story http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22335520

Good news that the EU and member state's governments are taking this matter seriously at last. Our ecosystems are so complex it's difficult to pinpoint the cause of lack of bees. Maybe it's the pesticides (these or others), maybe it's the weather, mobile phones or just a natural cycle we haven't recognised. But we should try to find an answer and reverse the trend. There has certainly been a reduction in bee numbers here - especially honey bees. Actually, I don't really mind what insects do the pollination. One year we had 2 large wasps nests in the garden which did wonders for the raspberries which the wasps seemed to adore.

I do wonder whether commercial bees are getting publicity for their problems when the issues may well also be with bumble bees and all the other bees and insects that work hard for our harvests as well as themselves.

See my post on first bee seen http://froggartscottagegarden.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/first-bees.html 
But it's only this last week that we've seen many more - mostly big bumble bees.

Buying seeds and potatoes

Time to check the seed store and buy new seeds needed for planting this year.

We always save bean seeds and have a good supply of Broad Beans and Runner Beans from last year's harvest. (We're using the Runner beans saved year on year from seeds that Mum bought in 1982.) However last year the French Beans just didn't get going. I tried saved seeds and two different purchased packets and they were all pretty  pathetic so I'll have to buy more this year (Blue Lake).

Also need to order potato tubers. We usually plant Sante and Pentland Javelin and a couple of other varieties to try out. The last few years I've managed to save some of our own - but last year's harvest was so poor we don't have much in store. I have kept some Desirees which didn't do too badly although they were all very small. They are already sprouting in their cardboard box. Back in November I planted a few Sante in big tubs in the greenhouse. They are only now beginning to break the surface of the soil so we won't be harvesting for a couple of months! This year I've decided to buy Sante, Orla and Setanta and plant the saved Desirees.


As well as potatoes I've ordered:

• Marrows - green long bush which we harvest small and use for courgettes and let 3 or 4 grow to marrows for chutney.
• Brussel sprouts (Bedford)
• Lettuces (Tom Thumb)
• Parsley (Moss curled)
• Beetroot (Boltardy)
• French Beans (Blue Lake)

We're still not planting onions, leeks and shallots because of the alium leaf miner. see December 2011 post "Know your onions and their predators ". They devastated our newly-purchased shallots last year.

Roses

Our garden has many different types of roses - climbers, ramblers, bushes, miniature and roses round the door. Some have been blooming for a few weeks and others are just getting going now. They are lovely - but I'm not much good at looking after them. They seem to get a lot of black spot - this year especially perhaps because it's been so wet. The previous owners who designed and built our lovely garden planted roses at the base of all the big trees so we have roses in the magnolia, the silver birch, the maple, Korean fir.

Here are some photos of roses around our garden:

I love this one that looks like it's been painted - but it has lots of prickles!

Bunches of little pink & white flowers

Climbing roses in the silver birch

Big floppy pink roses with lovely perfume

The small pinky-white roses round the front door are looking rather sad this year I usually have to fight the greenfly in the spring and caterpillars later in the year. But this year the leaves are brown and not many flowers at all so I haven't taken a photo. This what they are supposed to look like.