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New rose garden nearly ready.

resi

By resi

15 comments


i am about to finish my new rose bed.
this was an area with the least compacted soil after the build and as i had a number of plants saved from our previous house, which started to appear more or less alive from under heaps of soil or tiles or general builders rubble, this seemed the best place to use as a holding bay
i got so used to seeing this area as just a jumble of plants and pots with, usually covered in layers of straw, to save on watering and weeding! that i didnt notice the esthetic side of it anymore
funny how you adapt to things, even if you dont want to
to.
this spring i decided my cliffs were sort of growing ok and i needed something else close to the house
so the left part of it is the rose bed, filled in with lots of other stuff too and the right hand side of the little path through it was going to be my close to the kitchen herb bed

i dug out a short cut which i am forever using on my way to the bottom of the garden and collected the stones together which we had brought back from our trips to the mountains

then the really hard bit where i started to search for stones in the fields, this is where my elongated arms came in ;-))
in the end after weeks of scouring i collected about 50 big usable stones and started putting them in between the plants
i have no piccies of most the planting stage as i had probs using my camera

it is beginning to come together, at the moment the groundcover still mainly consists of bindweed which i can not dig out as the soil is now too hard
but i am waiting for some summer storms so the soil will be workable for one or two days and i can get most of them out and then plant some kind of groundcover, i am thinking of filling the open spaces with chamomile.
thyme does a good job too but i already have so much of the stuff creeping around
at the moment i have 2 roses Mme Isaac Pereira, one rose Multiflora Vanmarcus, one rose President de Seze and one r. Marie d’Orleans in there, plus a cple of brooms and some Santolino and Helichrysums, 2 Gaura Lindheimers and 3 Nepetas Faasenii, catnep and lots of lavender dentata ,bronze fennel, rosemary horizontalis on the banks, two wild budleas and one budlea Kindleyana and aB. Royal Red.
sorry to be so longwinded but this whole blog really started as a reminder to myself of the progress i have made and the history of the garden as was finding that i was beginning to forget the little details, which can be so fascinating to look back on.
i was really trying to find a site where i could just stick all my stuff without making it into a blog type thing as i had never done anything public like that before
but i must admit that it has been so lovely, positive and not to forget ‘very inspiring’ to be able to talk to other likeminded people about the subject we all seem obsessed by ;-))) yep our gardens and everybody elses!!
Thank you everybody

this will be my next project, making raised beds for my herbs on the other side of the ‘path’
at the moment the wooden beams are just there to give me an idea of the size of the beds and how to fit them, as under there we have our sceptic tank too so we have to fiddle around, keeping those inspection holes accesible.

More blog posts by resi

Previous post: Chickory and more chickory

Next post: The last of the cliffs!



Comments

 

Those wooden beams are beautiful. Interesting to see what you are up to!

17 Jul, 2011

 

hi resi - looks like you're getting there :)
It's going to be really lovely!...don't you find that things take around three years to get established and then go mad? lol!
...and such a stunning location, wonderful views :)

17 Jul, 2011

 

I agree you have a very pretty area to call home and your rose garden is really coming along well...such a difference to looking out on straw and a maintenance area for your plants.

It must have been hard work transporting those heavy stones back to your garden....I hope you had some way of doing that without causing yourself an injury!

Good luck with your plans for the herb garden and I hope the soil loosens a bit for you so you can put your finishing touches to the rose garden soon.

17 Jul, 2011

 

I love rocks! How wonderful (if back-breaking) to be able to pick up those stones from round about. It's going to be great, Resi - keep on blogging!

Btw, if it's ground cover you're after, I've found Woodruff spreads brilliantly (Galium odoratum) even on very dry soil.

17 Jul, 2011

 

Looking good Resi! Love the wood on the raised beds.

18 Jul, 2011

 

thanks Lulu and Karen, more like 5 yearts here and still hard work apart from the Stachys and the euphorbias LOL
yes we are soo lucky to be able to live in this part of the world, it is stunning AND empty, no motorways or dual carriage ways even, no industry apart from agriculture and little tourism in the summer only.
villages which havent been prettified and still look like 100 yrs ago, i will stop now... getting carried away here.
thanks for the woodruff tip Sheila, however i think that is more of a dry shade plant but i will head it under my suggestions for gr cover and try different plants there and see which does best, everything is still experimental in my garden
yes Nariz and Lulu i keep finding lovely uses for all the wood we have around, this is the nice part of finishing with the most backbreaking part of establishing and beginning the real creative proces of gardening now.
the stones arent really from around here , mountain and valley rocks, they must have been used for dwellings which fell down and are just scattered around everywhere, the local stones are no good for gardening with, too soft

18 Jul, 2011

 

Wish you were closer! I have rocks...and rocks...and boulders! I wouldn't mind sharing them. Love what you're doing with the raised beds...I have a couple of those in the planning stages too! Your roses are really coming together for you. As a suggestion, something which is usually easy to grow in dry conditions and has lovely colour is sedum. There are so many types, I'm sure you could find a low growing one. not sure if it's ok for foot traffic, but your idea of chamomile sounds great. I love the stuff and it smells so nice when tread upon! would you use the Roman or German type?

20 Jul, 2011

 

thanks for the idea Lori, i have played with that but have a lot of different sedums on my cliffs, whre they do a brill job, on the flat Jesse races through them whilst hunting her bees and lizards and mice and they would snap of so quickly
i have slightly gone off chamomile, but might put those around my herb beds instead, the roman variety as the plants are lower
Drc726 came up with phlox subulata emerald cushion, which i like the sound of and the colour! and i know it does well around here, and more to the point i can actually buy it here!
but those ideas are still cooking..

20 Jul, 2011

 

Yes rock cress is a rockerie staple here too.

21 Jul, 2011

 

Lovely views resi. Your garden is full of character and determination. A lot of plants go anywhere in the world. Though it is getting much stricter about exchanges of plant material of any kind from one country to another.

Are you planting any grapes? I love the idea of a loggia shaded by vines, with a big table and a convivial group of family and friends gathered, eating local food and garden produce, and planty of wine. That's my vision of France.

28 Apr, 2012

 

No i havent planted any grapes yet Dorjac, they need a southerly aspect and my terrace is N.E facing, a trellis on a south facing side of the house is one of my projects in waiting and when that is up i will plant some grapevines, to go with those lovely, boozy big french meals!!

28 Apr, 2012

 

You have done there a lot of good work. Enjoy your new garden.

1 Feb, 2013

 

Your garden is coming together nicely Resi. Lovely to see someone get back to us with an ongoing project. Your blog is a reminder to YOU and a connection with us Goyers to see someone try to reach a dream garden. I was reading Jared Diamond's book with the miserable title 'Collapse'. On Easter Island, and in other parts of the arrid world, they have used stones effectively to conserve moisture and plant in the damper pockets between them. So your stone gathering is worth all the effort. Good luck with the rest of your project.

2 Feb, 2013

 

Dorjac, Resi recently wrote she is leaving this house and garden.

2 Feb, 2013

 

Ah that is a bit disapointing to hear Katarina. Some people don't mind a lot of hard work, then a fairly rapid move to yet another project. We did a huge garden project with mighty hard work attached, then we sold up, as we had a good offer for the land we slaved over. That was well over 25 years ago now. We enjoyed that garden for about 12 years after it was finished.

2 Feb, 2013

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