Summer cuttings of heritage and climber roses

 

This last week I have made lots of summer rose cuttings of climbers and heritage roses using semi-hard wood from stems that have flowered this season.  Thank you to Joyce from Tudor Park garden at Ryal Bush and other friends for allowing me to take cuttings from their treasures.  I have only ever grown roses from hardwood cuttings so I am going to be interested in how many take root.  I won’t count my potential roses until they have roots on them!!!

 While we have had a week of fine weather, I have managed to get some hedges trimmed and today started on tidying up the flaxes (harakeke).  I love flax for many reasons.  They are relatively cheap to buy and once established they give height quickly and look good all year round.  I feel they come into their own in the winter especially, when they become focal points when there aren’t a lot of bright spots.  Some years they flower in summer and then, their nectar brings bellbirds and tuis to the garden.  They provide shelter and great leaves for floral art.  I love the variety of colours they come in and have flax in several areas in the garden.  There is a dark bronze one that I think is possibly Rage and a variegated one Golden Ray in the Holly garden that I see each day from the kitchen table.  An unnamed pink/grey stripe flax is establishing in the front garden as well as a smaller red one that is struggling a bit.  The pink one reminds me of my sister who grew these up her West Coast driveway.  In the Red Tussock garden there is a variegated Phorium tenax as well as Yellow Wave.  In the Wintersweet garden to the north side of the house I have Peach Angel and Yellow Wave. Maybe there will be room for another at the other end of this garden that is still to be developed.  Along the street frontage I planted flaxes initially to provide shelter – these are in some shade now.  These are an original plant of Yellow Wave and some species Phorium tenax and a flax from the Chatham Islands grown from seed by friend Cathy.  That seems a lot of Yellow Wave!!!  I have grown it from divisions – I love it!  I feel it has an unfortunate name.  I have seen it look quite yellow in other people’s garden but here it is beautiful shades of green.

Winter arrangement utilising flax leaves (Rage and Yellow Wave) 

and other greenery with no flowers