Six on Saturday: March of the Roses

Roses have been budding up since early this month, but resolutely refusing to open; sunshine and warmer days over this last week seemed to be the trigger they needed and one or two are now showing off their rosy glory, starting with R ‘Strawberry Hill’, above, increasingly one my favourites. More than likely, ‘Madame Alfred Carrière’ was the first, her blooms appearing way above my head and easily missed. There may be a hint of colour on buds of a handful of roses, but mostly they seem content to wait until they feel the time is right, like ‘Gertrude Jekyll, below, demonstrating the benefit of training stems horizontally to encourage more side shoots and therefore more blooms:

Reluctantly removing the last of the tulips blooms from various pots, cleared the way for refilling them with summer bedding. I have broken from my usual colour scheme in the four square pots on the paved area, using gaura for height, and keeping to pastel shades of pink and light purple, using argyranthemum, calibrochea, diascia, osteospermum and lavender lobelia. Hopefully they will be well-established when we open the garden in five weeks time.

With a dry weekend forecast, I had planned to go back and tackle the leak in the reservoir of the stream, which involved removing many of the surrounding rocks and part of the metal framework that supported them to allow access to the join in the liner where I think and hope the problem is. Tomorrow I will apply the repair tape and keep my fingers crossed that this resolves the issue. Surprisingly, since the last time I looked at the reservoir, it had refilled up to the level of the leak, even though it had been covered – presumably just from rainfall.

Despite the pesky wood pigeons, there is still a reasonable show from the wisteria, with blooms restricted to the upper parts of the framework, as if the pigeons were too lazy to venture higher. I must be thankful for small mercies…

One of my favourite May combinations, the three As – allium, astrantia and aquilegia – are ably doing their stuff, with the many astrantia slowly clumping up nicely and well worth waiting for. The aquilegia, ‘Green Apples’ is one I grew from seed many years ago and returns reliably without seeding around, although I try to be diligent in deadheading.

A big thank you goes out to Jim of Garden Ruminations, who ably hosts this Six on Saturday meme, allowing us to share six things from our garden each Saturday, a useful way of highlighting often quite random things

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