Alba Roses Archives – Welcome to The Moosbach Garden

I got up this morning with really good intentions, a speedy breakfast was had, a coat was put on, gardening gloves, secateurs and weeding implements in hand. I think that you would all agree, so far so good. Wellington boots were placed on and out into the garden I marched. I weeded most of the flower beds earlier this month in a week when we had 3 glorious days of sunshine and all that is left are 2 smallish beds. So off I marched implements in hand but the ground was frozen solid, so that was that.

I did manage to prune some roses and did an inspection of the garden, taking stock of which plants needed re-staking, which plants needed a prune and which perennials were putting up new shoots.

It is amazing how resilient nature is, most of the Phlox plants have good new shoots as do most of the delphiniums and hydrangeas. There are even some magnolia trees with swelling buds, the fruits buds on the pear trees are swelling and greening up and the roses are now actively growing. You know I think that is pretty amazing as most of this week we have had night temperatures of -7. Every cloud has a silver lining as they say and reduced slug and snail populations may just be that silver lining. One of my goals this year is to eradicate the use of slug pellets, we have an active frog population and the pond is currently full of frog spawn. Frogs are really an asset in the garden with keeping plant predators in check but what we really want is a good hedgehog population. As far as I am aware we don’t have any here at the moment but there is a hedgehog rescue centre about an hour from here. I shall be contacting them this year and seeing if we can provide a safe, toxin free home to some.

At the moment we are full of anticipation in the Moosbach Garden, this is the fourth year for the garden and last year we planted about 60 new David Austin roses, we have to admit that we’re feeling a little like children who can’t wait for Christmas. You see, we’ve read dozens of books on planting, pruning and caring for roses, we’ve followed their advice and now we can’t wait to see how it all turns out. We have created a new rose garden in the top garden, we’ve planted a highly scented rose hedge as a link between the top and middle gardens, we’ve planted some rambling roses to grow into trees and we’ve even planted some Alba, Damask, Centifolia and Musk roses that only flower once per year. We erected an electric fence around the garden to keep the deer out who have developed a taste for roses and so far it seems to be working. If we are honest about it we didn’t really know that we had a problem with deer until we started planting more roses, we had a few roses that never seemed to come to much and now we know why.

It would be interesting to install some motion activated night cameras in the garden and see what is actually about and more importantly what they are doing in our garden. I wonder how many of us are blissfully unaware of what animal traffic passes through our gardens at night. Most of us start out just trying to create a beautiful garden for our own pleasure but we also end up creating a paradise for nature and this is no bad thing (as long as they don’t eat your plants).

So our hopes for this year are for an even more beautiful garden, a good crop of fruit and an increase in the diversity of wild garden visitors. For us one of the wonderful benefits is being able to grow a multitude of different fruits which have not been sprayed with chemicals. When you get a good fruit year it’s wonderful, last year was catastrophic as a late frost destroyed 80% of the apples, pears, plums and cherries. However, you know nature has a way of compensating and this year all of the fruit trees are crammed with fruit buds. If the apple, pear, plums, damson, peach, nectarine, apricot, fig and quince trees produce a good crop this year we don’t mind losing a few to the birds.

So as soon as the weather improves and the soil is workable we shall get the last of the flower beds ready for the coming season and then the vegetable garden dug over and planted. We absolutely love preparing a meal with produce grown in the garden here, knowing that’s it not been sprayed with chemicals, has a zero environmental footprint and the farthest that it’s travelled is from our garden to the kitchen.

Once the roses start flowering we will post some pictures, along with the delphiniums and other perennials. We wish you all a fantastic Spring season and if you listen carefully you can hear the plants growing.

Happy Gardening ……

For those of you who thought that a rose was just a rose, (as I pretty much did) then welcome to a whole new world that you can explore. In David Austin’s book “The Rose” you can kind find a plethora of concise and expertly crafted information on the different types of roses and how long they have been around. To the uninitiated there are tea roses, floribunda roses, climbing roses and rambling roses and I suspect that everyone is aware of those. What I found most interesting and inspirational is the concept of using the older roses that only flower once per year in your garden. This was the norm until the introduction of the Chinese repeat flowering roses. David Austin comments in his book that we have become so used to having repeat flowering roses in our gardens that the concept of a rose that only flowers once is almost alien to us. However, if you have a larger garden with enough space why not plant an Alba, Gallica or a Damask rose? Because these only flower once per year they are absolutely stunning as all of their energy and love goes into producing one glorious display of flowers. I for one have purchased and planted 8 of these roses and a good point is made by David Austin that we expect no more from other shrubs like rhododendrons for example. I have planted mine alongside paths where they can be admired as you stroll along the many paths in our garden. Admittedly we are lucky enough to have 16 acres at our disposal but even in a smaller space I think that they can be a show piece. I have chosen (as a starting point) Celsiana, Quatre Saisons, York and Lancaster and the Alba rose alba semi plena. You can google these to get images or alternatively you could visit the David Austin website.

Now is the perfect time to plant bare root roses, the roots get a chance to spread and establish whilst the rose is not putting its energy into leaf and flower production.

I always plant mine with compost mixed with well-rotted horse manure and I don’t think that you can give them a better start than by sprinkling symbiotic fungi granules over the roots and into the planting hole.

I shall be posting photographs of these lovely roses next year when they are flowering but for now all I can do is look at their leafless branches and imagine the glory to come. Happy gardening!!