Rose planting is not to be rushed. I have conceded this after visiting two garden centres with my husband. I had the idea that we could transform the small patio area behind our forsythia 'hedge' into a rose bed in readiness to celebrate the Coronation of King Charles III. I could visualise us sitting there with our near neighbours, drinking tea and eating cake.
That was the idea, but the truth is that roses take time. The only ones available were in pots and seemed to be for special occasions. The clue was in their names, variations on 'silver years', 'golden years' and 'lovely nannas'. It so happens that this year for us too is a celebratory one, but that is no excuse for impulse buying.
My husband learned his craft working for a rose grower and nurseryman and he knows that the proper season to plant roses is the autumn. Roses come 'bare-rooted' which means we should order them from a nursery and they will arrive securely wrapped to help them overcome the strain of being dug up, minus soil, from their native field. He knows this, because one of his early jobs was digging them up.
So it is October then. This gives us the rest of the time to enjoy the daffodils and then put them in pots over the summer to die down and then replant; to let the wallflowers flower and then finish; to stop treating this area as an overflow bed where we, actually, I, stick things that I do not want to throw away. Then it is over to my husband with the digging and enriching of our clay soil with plenty of manure.
Marriage takes time. Preparation makes it worthwhile. Impulsive actions rarely work.
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