R&R David Austin English Roses

Out of their catalog I bought three rose bushes from David Austin English Roses this year. This was my second purchase from them and I have been really pleased with the performance of both roses.  English Roses are relatively new group roses coming to prominence in the 1970's. They originated from crosses made between certain Old Roses and Modern Hybrid Teas and Floribundas. The roses combine the fragrance of Old Roses (something my wife and I enjoy) with the color range and repeat-flowering of a Modern Roses.
English Roses come in a wide variety of types. There are roses for small gardens, highly fragrant roses, roses for hedges, climbers and ramblers. The English Roses have proven to be resistance to disease which is important considering the way rose rosette virus has attacked the Knockout varieties. The catalog is over 100 pages and offers about 200 varieties. The David Austin English Roses run 25 to 30 dollars each plus shipping and handling. There is a discount for purchasing three of the same rose.
The roses come as bare root plants, so it is important to soak them in a bucket of water for 12 hours in order to rehydrate them. English Roses are heavy feeders and require fertilizing about every thirty days. The roses also require regular watering which so far this year has not been much of a problem. So far this year,  I have had to put the sprinklers out just once. Of course this could, and probably will, change as we get into July, August and September.

Young Lycidas

My first purchase, three years ago,  was an Old Rose Hybrid Young Lycidas. The rose is very deep magenta with purple mixed in. Young Lycidas won Best Shrub in Portland's Best Rose Contest in 2013 and was awarded the top prize for at the Cocur Internaticional de Roses, Barcelona. So it's highly fragrant and it's named after my favorite poem Lycidas by John Milton. Unfortunately, it's too long to put in this blog, but I highly recommend reading it. I planted this by my deck in the backyard and it gets afternoon sun from 1PM to 5PM so it's performed reasonably well without full sun. It runs about 4 x 3 feet and has about 90 petals.

   The Poet's Wife was this year's purchase. The rose is light yellow  color with a great fragrance. It's produced flowers in abundance since May after planting it at the end of March. Supposedly, the fragrance gets stronger as it ages, we'll see. It's planted in my full sun bed in the front yard along with some lily bulbs I purchased from White Flower farms. I may have messed up by putting the bulbs in front of the roses, of course, the roses haven't yet reached their full size of 4 x 3.5 feet. The Poet's Wife's was introduced in 2015 so it hasn't had the opportunity to win any awards but I like it. It's yellow and I really love yellow flowers. It has about 77 petals.


The Poet's Wife

Below is a poem by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans. Her novel Middlemarch is 12th on the New York Times greatest novels of all time. It's really great.

Roses by George Eliot

You love the roses - so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!



A New Garden Room?

The idea of a garden divided into rooms is credited to the British garden designer Lawrence Johnson.  Gertrude Jekyll, the most influential garden designer of the early 20th century, popularized the concept in almost 400 gardens throughout England and the United States.  Jekyll believed that no garden could be beautiful in every season and therefore promoted the idea that gardens should be divided into "rooms" or separate enclosed spaces, decorated as

a back fence garden room

differently as the rooms in a house, so that there would always be a beautiful room to visit.  Box hedges, trees and shrubs, herbaceous borders or stone could provide "walls" enclosing these rooms, and different plants, colors, and themes could individualize them for visitors who moved from one room to another.

Garden lovers witnessed that the concept is alive and well in Memphis as they wandered through the garden rooms of Jane Carter (one featuring a purple bedstead and matching flowers), Anne Riordan (yes, a garden room for golf), or another of the tour hosts for the MAMG Through Our Garden Gates Tour in early June.  

This penchant for garden rooms got me to thinking.  We live in a time when people's possessions overflow into attics or basements or garages or even PODS.  In dogwalking throughout my Midtown

a more cared for look than most alleys

neighborhood, I have observed that sometimes horticultural activities escape the normal boundaries of front, side, and back yard, even into that area behind the back fence.  I'm wondering if the alley could be our new "garden room"?

Now, I admit that alleyways aren't actually "enclosed," and even more to the point, most are anything but garden spots.

a typical overgrown alley

Every kind of Memphis vine, weed, grass, scrub brush or stunted tree can be found there. Trumpet vine, Virginia creeper, and poison ivy flourish on the fences. Johnson grass reaches its peak heights. Frequently, rubbish accumulates and is covered by the brush. 

There are exceptions, however, to the typical alley, as the first two pictures above illustrate. One of my favorite alley gardens runs between Forrest and Galloway just west of the Memphis zoo.  Here, there are no weeds.  Flowers bloom in most seasons.  This narrow alley garden is planted and cared for perhaps because it is adjacent to a garage and the main entrance to the property, but I wouldn't bet that was the major reason.  Its attractiveness seems to be an outgrowth of the owner's love of plants. 

looking east to McLean

looking west

functional and attractive

I also enjoy several alleys where hydrangeas flourish.  I'm not sure these alleys would qualify for the Mid-South Hydrangea Tour, which took place this past Sunday, but they certainly brighten up a dogwalk. The first picture shows a garbage can tucked in among attractive foliage, and also sports some nice signage. The hydrangea scene below backs up to a wrought iron fence that adds to the attractiveness of this alley.  

A few years ago, I started trying to keep my alley neat, or at least free of noxious and annoying weeds and debris.  One thing led to another.  I began to transplant extra stuff from my yard--Dutch iris, daffodils, and canna--between the monkeygrass, periwinkle and Virginia creeper that grew there uninvited. A holly showed up (I didn't plant it). A friend gave me some orange daylilies (ditch lilies) and they went to the alley. Replacing the old fence with a new one was an incentive to consider new plants, and last year I added several hostas. One of the hostas (a Lowe's purchase) turned out to love the alley. So I imagined a new life for the mophead hydrangeas languishing in the afternoon sun by my front porch, and transplanted them to the alley. 

I don't know whether the alley garden should be labelled a room rather than simply a border.  I have observed only a few that can accommodate a bench.  Maybe what I am calling the new alley room is simply a less exalted type of the French allee, the formal pathway between similar trees or shrubs inviting one to a distant feature. Yet, whatever the name, alley gardens offer a casual passerby what all of us strive for in our usual gardens: a pleasant design of color and texture, a sense of calm and peace, and an invitation to pause in our busy lives.  

I know that I will keep adding to my alley plant collection--new daffodil bulbs this fall and whatever else is in abundance.  I expect that I will be "decorating" my alley garden room for some time to come! Oh Gertrude Jekyll, what would you think of this?



  

My Mother's Orchid: To Re-pot or Not

In February, I wrote about how the orchid I bought for my mother for Mother's Day last year had started to re-bloom.  This orchid is special to me because it was the last Mother's Day gift I'll ever be able to give to my mother, who died in October 2016. After last summer's blooms faded, I trimmed the bloom spike back to a node, hoping for a re-bloom but nothing happened until winter when buds appeared. By February, a few blooms had begun to open, and this is what it looked like on Mother's Day this year.

One thing I love about orchids is how long the blooms last. While a bouquet of cut flowers might last 2 weeks if you are lucky, the blooms of an orchid can last for months and months. Then (at least in the case of Phalaenopsis type of orchid), you can cut the bloom spike back to a node, and it sometimes produce a secondary (albeit smaller) bloom spike, as this one did. Purchasing an orchid is an inexpensive way to have beautiful flowers around for a very long time. I expect that the blooms on this plant, which began to have blooms in February, will continue to look good for several more weeks.

While I've grown orchids in the past and I know a little about how to care for them, I'm not an orchid expert by any means. I was guessing that the time to re-pot might be immediately following the finish of the bloom period, so I consulted the website of the American Orchid Society and several other places to plan my next steps. Since this orchid is special to me, I'd like to learn how to care for it properly and increase the chances that I'll have it around for as long as possible.

As I suspected, the best time to re-pot is usually just after the plant has finished flowering. For this species of orchid, that is usually in the summer. However, re-potting is not necessarily needed every year. According to the American Orchid Society, there are two important indications that the plant needs to be re-potted: (1) overcrowded roots inside the pot and large numbers outside the pot or (2) the potting medium has begun to break down. 

This orchid definitely has a few roots coming from the growing media that have escaped the pot and it also has a lot of "air" roots that have emerged from the upper stalk of the plant. Since Phalaenopsis are epiphytes, these air roots are normal, as this kind of orchid in nature would use these roots to attach itself to a tree or rock, where it gets its nutrition from rain and air. 

The roots that we are most concerned about being too crowded are the ones inside the pot. We need enough of the roots inside the pot to contact the moisture from the growing media and we don't won't them so crowded that they are not getting enough air. But orchid roots are prone to rot if the pot is too large, so I don't want to increase pot size unnecessarily. Until I remove this orchid from its pot, I'm not sure whether I will need to move it up to a slightly larger pot or simply put in new potting media. 

Most orchids are potted in a mixture that is either bark or peat-based. This one is potted in mostly bark, and the mix still looks pretty good so I might be able to wait a bit before I would need to re-pot based on the soil mixture. Again, it is hard to tell until I remove the orchid from its pot and examine it more closely.

So my plan is to wait until the current blooms finish, and then remove the plant from its pot so that I can inspect the roots. As you can see below, one of the bloom spikes has turned brown and is ready to be cut off. But when I took this picture today, I noticed that the spike that still has blooms on it is showing signs of putting out additional flowers.

Look for the new growth in these pictures. It appears that bloom spikes might be branching out here:

and here:

So while I'm waiting for the current blooms to fall, I'll keep my eye on what happens with this new growth. These blooms will not be as showy as the blooms on a new bloom spike that would emerge from the plant if I cut this existing spike completely off. So it looks like I might have a choice to make. I can either continue to enjoy a few blooms on this old bloom spike or I can cut the spike off at the base and let the plant direct all its energy toward a larger display in the early spring. I'll keep you updated on what happens. 

Advice/recommendations are welcomed.