The garden roses - June 2024

What a washout the spring months were, it felt like summer was never going to arrive. So many things in the garden are still dormant (or sprouted leaves with no sign of flowers). However, the roses have come into bloom and have certainly stole the show!

I absolutely adore roses. We purchased several from David Austin when we first moved into this house and they are beautiful. Last year several developed black spot so we weren’t sure how healthy they would be this year, but they have produced lots of blooms so far! We heavily mulched the ground in spring and have been treating so hopefully that will help to keep it at bay this year.

The beautiful yellow rose above is called “Bring me Sunshine”.

The rose above is another David Austin, I can’t 100% remember what all the names are, I did have labels on them all but they have mostly got lost over time. I believe the rose above is Boscobel. It starts off a real deep pink but then gets lighter as it opens, it smells amazing.

Let me share some photos of the other varieties below.

This year I decided that I wanted to pick a fresh bunch of flowers each week from the garden. It has become my Sunday routine. I ensure that I put each of them straight into water after cutting and I’ve been getting a good week out of each bunch (some elements lasts about 2 weeks!). Some of the roses fall sooner due to the weight of their petals but then other buds come into bloom so it’s a lovely cycle.

I have been spending more time getting to know my camera and how to use it (properly), so hopefully you will gradually see the images on my site improve. Below is one of the first shots that I took using fully manually mode. This allowed me to darken the background to make the flowers really stand out, don’t they look beautiful.

I hope that the roses above have brightened your day like they do mine! I wish that you could smell them through the screen.

Next time I will share some of the other things that I’ve been growing this year (well if it all comes into bloom that is).