Latest news with #roses
Daily Mail
17-07-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
Empty seed packets. Tools that snap in half: As it hits 'financial difficulty', how gardening queen bee Sarah Raven's £27m empire is wilting fast
The news is likely to have horticulturalists up and down the country reaching not for the secateurs but for the smelling salts. For as the Daily Mail's Richard Eden revealed yesterday, life for Sarah Raven, the 62-year-old queen bee of the gardening world, is not exactly a bed of roses right now.
Telegraph
03-07-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Ask the head gardener: Why are my rose petals turning brown and falling off?
Dear Tom, We have an annual problem with our roses. They bloom wonderfully, with large flowers, but the petals drop very quickly (after three or four days) and sometimes go brown around the edges. Otherwise they look healthy. No rust, black spot or aphids. Any ideas for how we can solve this problem? – Brian Dear Liz, A healthy rose in full fettle can be hard to beat, but when things don't go to plan, it can be incredibly frustrating and pretty miserable-looking. I recently judged the roses at the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival, and I have to say that the hot, dry conditions were far from favourable for the nation's favourite flower. Despite the incredible talents of the rose growers at the show, namely David Austin, Peter Beale and Harkness, the blooms were showing signs of stress on day one. When it comes to your roses, there are a number of potential issues which I'll highlight, requiring further investigation from you to decipher which is causing the petal drop. The heat and dry conditions would accelerate the deterioration of rose flowers. It is tricky to overcome the heat issue, but first, check if there is any moisture within the soil around the base of the shrub. Dig down by 10cm, and if no moisture is present, then regular watering through dry spells will help. Next year, apply a thick layer of mulch in the spring. The use of grey water is perfectly adequate for roses; washing-up water with the food particles removed or bath water without salts will help to sustain your plants. Feeding your roses every month through the growing season with a granular rose fertiliser will help to keep the shrubs in good health and extend flowering. Once you've applied the feed, water in well. There are several diseases which will affect the health of your roses, as well as pests such as thrips, which are hard to spot with the naked eye but cause damage to most flowering plants. The best way to combat either pests or diseases with your roses is through good husbandry and hygiene. Clear away any dead flowers or foliage and pop into the bin, rather than the compost heap. Remove any crowded areas of stems to maximise air circulation and don't overplant the areas around the shrubs, which will restrict air movement and increase the potential for pest and disease and their spread. Growing healthy roses through challenging conditions is becoming more of an issue. I remember at the start of my career that monoculture rose beds were commonplace, but the spraying regime to keep them healthy was also common practice. As we garden through more erratic conditions and move away from maintaining plants with chemical intervention, there needs to be a new approach. Using roses in a mixed planting will avoid the group of bushes becoming a magnet for specific pests and diseases. In mixed plantings, allow a reasonable amount of light and air movement around your roses to minimise issues. Some old-fashioned roses such as hybrid teas and floribundas can be less suited to drier conditions and become more prone to diseases such as black spot. Here are a few roses that have stronger disease resistance and are more tolerant of less ideal conditions, if your roses do not improve:
Times
01-07-2025
- Climate
- Times
Beat the heat with these gardening tips
Be selective about what you water — you don't need to water things that are already established, such as most shrubs, hedges and lawns. Yes your lawn might look crispy and brown, but like your shrubs, it will recover as soon as it starts raining again. Soaking your lawn in a heatwave is just a waste of water. Focus mainly on watering anything that's newly established or is really suffering in this heat. Newly planted roses are particularly vulnerable. When it's consistently hot and dry, only water early in the morning, ideally between 5am and 9am or in the evening, after 6pm. If you water in the middle of the day, not only is it wasteful but it can also scorch plants and a lot of the water will just evaporate. Rather than plonking your sprinkler down in your garden and hoping for the best, do targeted watering with a hose or watering can. Make sure the water goes in at the roots. A light sprinkle will just water the top of the surface of the soil. Avoid watering the leaves, which can lead to scorching if the sun is on them. • Discover more gardening advice, features and interviews with experts Plants in pots, especially smaller ones, are more susceptible to dying off because pots won't retain so much water. Whack a saucer under pots or put them on a tray or a bucket filled with water to help the plant to soak up moisture. If you can move them, take your pots to a shadier part of the garden. If there are any plants that are particularly fragile — like roses or anemones — you could place a parasol over them to try and help them out. A layer of mulch will help to lock in moisture and give your plants extra help to survive by keeping the roots of plants cool. Give your plants a break: don't feed or fertilise for a few weeks to avoid adding extra stress to struggling plants. Heatwaves are getting more common. To prepare for next time, begin planting more drought tolerant and resilient plants. Salvia, Perovskia and lavender are great drought-tolerant plants. Get ready for hosepipe bans by installing a water butt now so you can start harvesting rainwater when it does rain. Then you use grey water from your down pipes to keep your plants hydrated instead. As told to Sidonie Wilson How to Design a Garden is out now
Irish Times
22-06-2025
- Climate
- Irish Times
How can I resuscitate my dying roses?
My roses flowered brilliantly during the warm, dry weather earlier this summer, but now they are miserable and a lot of the flowers are dying off without even opening. Any suggestions as to how I can help them to recover? M Murphy, Cork Roses generally flower best when growing in a warm, bright, open but relatively sheltered spot where they can enjoy a deep, fertile soil enriched with mulches of well-rotted manure and a few handfuls of organic, slow-release pelleted fertiliser. The cool, rainy weather of late hasn't been kind to them, damaging and disfiguring petals and creating the kinds of growing conditions conducive to the spread of a range of common fungal diseases such as rust and black spot. Wet weather also causes a condition known as flower-balling, where the outer petals get so wet that they form a leathery skin around the bud, preventing the flowers from opening properly. This is often followed by the appearance of grey mould on the afflicted buds. From your description, it sounds likely that this is what's affecting your plants. There's no cure for it as such, but the good news is that it's typically a temporary problem that will resolve itself when the weather improves. In the meantime, the best solution is to rigorously deadhead all affected flowers to encourage the production of new healthy flower buds, and give plants a fortnightly liquid feed. To reduce the chances of this happening in the future, try to encourage an open growth habit through careful pruning techniques and avoid growing other plants too closely around them. Also bear in mind that certain varieties of rose, typically older kinds, are more vulnerable to this problem. READ MORE
CBS News
19-06-2025
- CBS News
Boston's secret garden has nearly 200 varieties of roses. "It smells just like you think it does."
Frederick Law Olmsted transformed Boston with the Emerald Necklace. One of the first formal landscapes of the park system was the James P. Kelleher Rose Garden, which continues to attract visitors. "Olmsted designed the Back Bay Fens in the late 19th century. The landscape kind of changed after he died when they dammed the Charles River up at the Museum of Science and they had to replant the whole area," said Declan Battles, marketing and communications manager of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy. Nearly 2,000 rose plants Designed in the 1930s, the garden still has lots of visitors in the city, along with volunteers who help take care of it. "Rose gardens were all the rage in the early 20th century," said Battles. The blooms have been popular ever since, transporting people into a real-life fairytale. "In the early 2000s the conservancy worked with the city of Boston to renew it, so that involved bringing in rosarians putting the turf down, putting irrigation in there, replanting the rose beds, weeding," said Battles. With nearly 2,000 plants and almost 200 varieties of roses, Battles describes it as Boston's own secret garden. "Now is probably the best time to look at them," he told WBZ-TV. Fountain restored Roses of all colors and sizes greet you as soon as you walk through the gates. Displayed through lined pathways lined with benches and on arched trellises, guests get a 360-degree view of the most beautiful roses. The garden's focal point, a fountain that wasn't operational for years until a little over a decade ago. "The cherubs around the fountain were not the originals, they were stolen sometime in the 60s or 70s, so the ones there were replaced in about 2014," explained Battles. Thanks to funding from the conservancy, the cherubs were replaced and the fountain restored. The Emerald Necklace Conservancy partners with the city of Boston to care for the garden, pruning and weeding every day. The group also runs volunteer cleanups every Tuesday through September. "Of course, it's a very popular place for people to get engaged, get married, I couldn't tell you how many phone calls and emails we get," added Battles. "People just appreciate nice flowers and it smells just like you think it does." The peak blooms are through the end of June. The garden is open from April to October. Guided tours are also available. Click here for more information.
