Some Christmas Pictures

Well you are to be congratulated on the superb results of all your hard work. I love the perennials in among the roses too, especially the pop of blue. What are some of the perennials you have growing?

silkyfizz wrote:Well you are to be congratulated on the superb results of all your hard work. I love the perennials in among the roses too, especially the pop of blue. What are some of the perennials you have growing?

Yes I agree. Especially about the blue. It can give the roses a real lift by the contrast in colour. We have lots of salvias, penstemon, pentas, agastache, yarrow, Louisiana Iris, nepeta, geranium, Alstremeria plus others I can't remember the names of. They sometimes tend to get out of control so we have decided to make sure we keep a better eye on them.

The good thing is most of them can be propagated easily so you don't need to spend a lot of money on them. Lee sometimes hits the markets and if she sees something she likes and we don't have she will buy it but generally they are all grown from cuttings. With a large garden it would not ne possible to plant it all up and have to pay.

We probably have 500 -600 cuttings in trays at present. Some strike so easily that we have a 100% success rate with them. Some of the salvias also strike really fast.

We also grow some things from seed (aquilegias, geraniums plus a plant that we can't remember the name of that has tall plumb coloured spikes on them. It is not a perennial but we keep some seed form the pods and they grow quite easily) and also division. Once you get the garden going it is surprising how many plants you can get from it for free.

muscovyduckling wrote:Great pics! Such a lovely garden :)do you have any pics of your Phillis Byde? I love her.

We shifted Phillis last winter as she is a bit thorny and the stand where we had her is right beside a path. She is still alive but not doing all that well so no photos sorry not even in our archive. I don't think she likes the climate or soil up here as she has never done all that well. Similar with Adelaide de Orleans, who seems to grow okay but very limited as far as flowers are concerned.

Ahh that is a shame. I've heard she is a thorny beast! But not to worry, all your other roses are looking fantastic

It's great to see you've had so much success growing things from cuttings. I've never done that before but I'm going to have a go next week with some cuttings from my neighbours' hydrangeas. Apparently they're easy to root, so hopefully I'll manage it!

what a fabulous garden - you have a great flare with design and the pergolas etc used with great effect... the gardens makes you want to see what is around the corner it all looks so interesting.. did you say what area the garden covers?

hariet~rose wrote:what a fabulous garden - you have a great flare with design and the pergolas etc used with great effect... the gardens makes you want to see what is around the corner it all looks so interesting.. did you say what area the garden covers?

about 2 acres (this includes the house carport etc)