Usually when going through my photos I look for a spectacular specimen to post about. Today when sorting through pictures I came across this one I took of a rose that has been struggling the past few years. It is a shrub rose, the only ones I now have in my gardens as I have found the other roses just too much work for these gardens. I have enjoyed many varieties of roses over the years, but with all the work required to keep them healthy and thriving, they just are not my favorites. This past season I gave away several of my older rose bushes in my quest to make way for my new wave of gardening which will include more edibles.
In reviewing all my gardens I have had to make lots of decisions over the years regarding plants that just weren't doing well here. In this case, it has nothing to do with the individual rose. In the past it has performed quite beautifully, but since I got sick, the dreaded Bittersweet has taken over a few areas of gardens, making it impossible for the existing plants to thrive. This rose was right in front of the burning bush hedge, which had concealed the ever creeping bittersweet that had made its way into the root system, leeching the nutrients out of the soil and decimating my roses and heather which had been doing quite nicely in that area.
I decided to move them all to give them a better chance of thriving, while putting sturdier plants to deal with the Bitterwsweet.
I put the Heather in front of the Blue Spruce, where it will get the more acid conditions which it loves.
As you can see this Heather is very sparse, but the roots were in good shape once I removed all the Bittersweet roots that had overwhelmed them.
I will give the Heather a hard pruning in the spring which will help to rejuvenate the entire plant. I moved all the Heather to the same area, which is right at the edge of the blue Spruce, where I had cut out a great microclimate area underneath it, in order to plant some more temperate plants next season.
I got my hubby to see that we had way too much lawn, necessitating lots of water, fertilizer and gas in the lawn mower. He agreed that we could easily do with less lawn, so I started staking out the front lawn area to plant around our leeching field, which has added lots of new garden space in full sun for more vegetables and fruits.
And I moved the rose out into a new area where I put several different shrub roses from all over the gardens.
I will be working on getting all of the front lawn down to a minimum. The area over the leeching field will become a patio with a grape arbor, which my hubby says he wants to build - that will remain to be seen!! But I have been carefully saving the seed pods from the Pipevine, and have planted the seeds right under the existing vine in order to have new plants ready for when he does get an arbor built, in case he decides against grapes!! Or, how about more Climbing Hydrangea??
Or Clematis? I now have several climbing varieties of plants to choose from. How fun to have my own stock with several choices!!
So, what about this weather??!! LOL You have to admit, we knew it was coming, as it always does here in New England. But does it always have to be such an abrupt change??!! Out enjoying the sunny mild weather one day and freezing the next!! But, we were indeed fortunate to have had such a mild fall. We saved a bundle on oil and it gave me a chance to get used to 62 degree temperature inside my house this year!!
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