GROWING CUT FLOWERS PART THREE Coming Roses up roses CLARE FOSTER continues her series on the cutting garden, focusing this month on growing a variety of roses for scent and colour, with advice from Green and Gorgeous flower farmer Rachel Siegfried

PHOTOGRAPHS EVA NEMETH

THIS PAGE ‘Just Joey’ is a hybrid tea rose with large, sumptuous blooms. OPPOSITE Rachel grows about 30 rose varieties, chosen for scent, colour and repeat flowering

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06-17Garden_CutFlowers [P].indd 4 21/03/2017 12:16 long with Pimm’s ROSE VARIETIES can begin. ‘If you want roses to repeat flower and strawberries and BEST FOR SCENT ‘Chandos throughout the season with good blooms still cream, roses are one Beauty’ (hybrid tea) has the most coming in September and October, you have of the most potent incredibly strong scent, and huge, to feed every week,’ Rachel advises. ‘We use a symbols of British blowsy pink-apricot flowers. foliar feed initially, Uncle Tom’s Rose Tonic, summertime. With BEST FOR LONG which is what all the rose growers use – it’s FLOWERING ‘Irish Hope’ their heavily scented, (floribunda) has pale yellow miracle stuff. You spray it on the leaves and it sumptuous blooms, flowers with a delicate makes them more resistant to black spot and they exude an old- honey-lemon perfume. other disease. As the season progresses and A BEST VASE LIFE ‘Duchess fashioned charm the plant forms flower buds, you start giving that appeals to almost everyone and make the of Cornwall’ has flowers that them a high potash feed, like comfrey tea, open deep coral and gradually most romantic arrangements, whether dis- which will keep the roses healthy and flower- turn a softer peachy pink. played singly, clustered together in posies, or BEST FOR STRONG COLOUR ing in flushes through the season.’ thrown together with other summer flowers in ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’ June is prime rose month, with blooms com- a looser composition. For Rachel Siegfried, (shrub rose) has sumptuous ing thick and fast. At this stage, you just have who grows cut flowers on her farm in Oxford- flowers in a glowing pink. to keep picking, and deadhead like mad every shire, roses are an essential in the cutting BEST FOR LARGE BLOOMS week during the growing season to encourage ‘Just Joey’ (hybrid tea) has patch. ‘Roses are probably my favourite of all coppery-orange flowers up to more flowers. ‘You can pick roses when they’re flowers,’ she says. ‘I grow repeat-flowering, cm in diameter. They are loose quite tight in bud,’ says Rachel. ‘As long as the scented roses. Scent is so important because and relaxed, so ideal for bouquets. sepals are reflexed back, they will open. I like that is what is missing when you buy to pick flowers in different stages of roses in the shops. They’ve had the growth for a single arrangement – scent bred out of them so that they can some quite blown, and some in bud. I’m be transported from the main rose- never governed by vase life – I’m trying growing countries – Kenya, Ecuador, to make a painterly composition and Colombia. Scent shortens vase life, so that’s why I need them in different that’s why it has been bred out.’ stages. The arrangement will then look Rachel grows a mixture of hybrid as if it was transferred straight from teas, floribunda and shrub roses, the garden into the vase.’ choosing those that perform best over a Often, Rachel will simply arrange long season. Because she is picking so roses and nothing else, but she also intensively from her plants, they will loves combining them with other things eventually become unproductive, so to give that fresh, fulsome early sum- she replants afresh every five or six mer feeling. Here, they mix with Ammi years to rejuvenate her stock. In most majus, Nigella papillosa ‘African Bride’ circumstances, however, plants would and Eryngium giganteum ‘Silver Ghost’, last at least  years. She recommends as well as Rachel’s flower of the season planting bare-root roses during the Phlox drummondii ‘Crème Brûlée’, dormant season between November and which she describes as ‘a brilliant March, which is cheaper than buying filler’. She has also used Rosa glauca container-grown plants. foliage and some very early Viburnum Once the plants are established, they opulus berries to balance the flowers. will need to be pruned in late winter The roses produce a second flush (although not just before or during of blooms in late summer. After this, a very cold snap). ‘We prune very hard – liter- FLOWER they are lightly pruned again, with a third of ally to about –cm off the ground, leaving GARDEN the growth lopped off to prevent wind-rock perhaps four main stems,’ says Rachel. ‘All the DIARY damage through the winter. At this point, the normal pruning rules apply: cut out all dead feeding ceases. ‘Roses are a huge amount of wood and crossing branches, and cut the June tasks work,’ admits Rachel. ‘But most people will Sow biennials, so that branches just above a main bud at an angle, so they will flower in May need to have only two or three plants to cut that the water can run off.’ Cutting the roses of the following year. from and they are so worth it. I cannot imagine back brutally means that the regrowth pro- Plant out dahlias that you my life without them’ २ duces long, straight picking stems, and it also have been growing on in pots. takes out any potentially diseased material to Plant out half-hardy annuals. Green and Gorgeous runs courses on growing rejuvenate the plant. Stake or support any tall plants. Deadhead spent flowers that cut flowers and floristry, and its farm is After pruning, Rachel mulches the roses have not been picked to open for sales on Saturdays, am–pm, until with a good shovelful of well-rotted compost encourage repeat flowering. October. Visit greenandgorgeousflowers.co.uk or manure and then waits for them to break Continue to feed roses for more details. Rachel buys her roses from bud. Once this happens, the feeding regime with a high potash feed. Pococks Roses in Hampshire: garden-roses.co.uk

OPPOSITE CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Rachel picking ‘Irish Hope’. Delicate pink ‘L’Aimant’. ‘Chandos Beauty’ in bud. Creamy white ‘Susan’. ‘Sweet Dream’, a patio rose. Coral pink ‘Duchess of Cornwall’. ‘Queen London Child’, another patio rose. ‘Chandos Beauty’. A display of roses in Rachel’s vintage vases (centre). THIS PAGE Rachel’s nished rose arrangement

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