David Austin's English Rose Newsletter

I don't know how I missed the first newsletter but I got the second email issue of the David Austin English Rose Newsletter the other day. It's great! The very first column is Now is the time to... Whereupon follows timely directions and suggestions for rose gardeners. The second paragraph starts out "Don't forget to water." Yikes! I forgot! So today we're giving each of the 9 planted roses two buckets of water because "...drenching helps to encourage their roots to delve deeper into the soil..." Which is good news because all we're going to be able to do all summer is drench. By bucket. I doubt we'll ever have any fancy trickle systems here.

The paragraph ends with "Always be guided by the weather conditions in your area." Ok, I can look up at the sky and even listen to the weatherman. But I'm not sure what "guided" is supposed to mean. I guess if the roses are dry, water them. If it's raining, the chore is done. If rain is in the forecast, don't water the roses but rather go talk to them and comfort them and tell them that you have no idea if it will actually rain or not but that you'd rather have them die of thirst than die by drowning. I'm going to have to work on that "guided by the weather" part. Maybe it's in Roses for Dummies.

The next paragraph is about Pruning. Yes! I need this! I was relieved to read "Bare root roses are despatched ready pruned and won't need further pruning during their first season." I'm not sure if that applies to climbers or not. I had a rose once (all the plants I buy are usually disposable plants because they end up dead) in a pot on my back deck one summer. The lone stem got higher and higher and then, when it was almost four feet high, it got one pretty, little rose right at the top. I was tickled pink with that rose. I looked at it every day. And then the Japanese Beetles declared my rose disposable so they disposed of it. Grrr. That better not happen to my 15 rose bushes. Surely the beetles can't eat all the roses on 15 bushes. I'll plant 15 more next year if that helps.

I followed the pruning paragraph until I got to this next section, which to do right, must be read with a British accent: "Simply remove between a third and two thirds of the height, depending on the effect you wish to create. The aim should be to bring out the natural beauty of the individual plant."

Removing 66% of the plant is way more than removing 33%. The percentage removed is directly related to (said with a British accent) "the effect you wish to create." What effect do I wish to create? I haven't the foggiest! I'm muddled! I'm addled, turbid and flummoxed!

And WHAT is the "natural beauty of the individual plant"? Right now, the roses look like chopsticks with thorns. I suppose than qualifies as some stark beauty. To figure out this "natural beauty", all I have to go on is the David Austin catalog and website. The catalog showcases close-ups of roses so that's not useful as a guide to pruning. I carefully studied the photos of the David Austin Gardens on the web but individual plants were not labeled in his group shots. "OK, all you gorgeous, natural beauties, plump your petals and look this way, smile, say Fertilizer kiss kiss... Click!"

I'm getting the impression that this is all about personal vision. I must not lose sight of the vision that drove me to purchase all the roses in the first place. Festoons, I wanted. Glorious profusion, I desired. Heady fragrance, I craved.

I do lots of arts and crafts and I'm able to get the effect I wish to create with scissors and a glue gun. But working with living plants is a whole new ball game. I have a friend who sticks plastic tulips in her garden every spring to get the effect she wishes to create. She gets plenty of admiration from the folks walking by her property and they don't even notice the tulips are plastic. Sounds like a reasonable plan to me. But since I bought the roses primarily for the scent, hot gluing blooms to my rose bushes completely defeats their function.

Which brings me to my all-time favorite section in the newsletter, the column on Fragrance! Woot! Fragrance is why I bought the roses from David Austin. Hopefully this section will be where I learn the difference between musk, clove and tea rose fragrance. I'm hoping to learn what a "background note" is. And I'm intrigued by how the scent of a rose is determined to be "delicately" scented or "slam-you-across-the-room-heavy" scented. I prefer heavy-scented but I read a website critical of heavy-scented roses. Say what? What is a rose FOR? I'm inclined to believe the critic was accustomed to the light and delicate scent of plastic. And they probably got the effect they wished to create.