Rose season

[puddleshark]

Roses & alliums in the Rose Garden at the Secret Garden.

I've visited four gardens in the past seven days, making hay while the sun is not shining too fiercely. Looks like the temperatures will be too hot and the sun too harsh for garden photography next week.







They love their roses in the Secret Garden, and they like their rose varieties to be decadent:


Rosa 'Rachel'.










Rosa 'Chartreuse de Parme'. Such a deep magenta that the sensors on my camera had a nervous breakdown.


Rosa 'Summer Wine'.


Allium.





I'm guessing they chose to plant alliums (and later in the year marigolds) round the roses as a natural form of pest control against the Rose Chafer beetles, and maybe it was working. I didn't see that many Rose Chafers on the roses, but they were everywhere else in the garden, thrumming past on their big beetle-y flight paths in a startling manner.




The pelargoniums have finally escaped from the greenhouse.


Salvia viscosa. The garden keeps adding to their amazing Salvia collection


Mulberry tree.


A shy peony.

Comments

[frith]

The Alliums are like a cross between a fireworks display and a buckyball. ^_^ I've taken note of the Allium/marigold trick. I have no roses but I used to have tiger lilies. Leaf beetles did so love to devour those.

[puddleshark]

...like a cross between a fireworks display and a buckyball...

LOL

They are! So spectacular.

You just have to make sure that the snails don't eat your marigolds. When the snails and the leaf beetles form an alliance, you're in trouble.

[adafrog]

Great, thanks.

[puddleshark]

Thank you! :-)

[watervole]

Anonymous are dancing on Monday - in the middle of the afternoon. On tarmac.

I've just written to the organiser to see if there's a grass alternative.

[puddleshark]

Oof. I hope the organisers can find an alternative spot with some shade.

I thought I might finally make it to Chippenham this year as a spectactor, but realistically it's just going to be too hot for me.