I am devoted to roses - as is this blog.

I think roses are some of the best value plants in any garden because, if you buy well, they flower from May/June to the first frosts (which almost no other plant does), they look beautiful, smell fantastic, encourage wildlife, will climb or scramble, stand tall and proud, or create a bush, groundcover, hedge etc and do almost anything you want - except be a tree! Why wouldn't you have roses? OK, so you have to deadhead and prune them but that's not much to ask is it, for so much in return? And personally I love deadheading them. I go into a sort of 'zen zone' and forget the world as I do it.

Luckily roses do well in clay. Phew! The clay here is a potter's dream - solid, vaguely pliable and orange. In fact it was famous - it's Kimmeridge clay and years ago was worth money to potters. However, its glory is no more and it's a nightmare for gardeners. It is completely unweilding except in extreme circumstances. Underground it is a solid mass. On the surface, with no additional help, in sun or drought it will bake as hard as ceramics - then crack. Tough stuff.

But clay is full of minerals and holds all sorts of plant nutrients well. The theory is, therefore, that the roses (and many other plants) should love my now supposedly heavily enriched and more open structured soil  which has been improved with just ten tons of well rotted horse manure and 14 tons of soil improver compost. Please may they thrive! I've done my best to help them.

Anyway, as you know from previous blogs, my garden design required a rose arch parade. It was always going to be a major feature in the garden. Initially I toyed with it being wooden but decided that metal would be thinner and ‘disappear’ more easily under the plants. And I needed a huge structure (10 metres long x 2.2m wide and 2.6m high) but I didn’t want it to over-dominate the garden.

I felt the metal should be hollow so that plants attached don’t burn when it’s hot. I also wanted the metal elements to be tubular not square for aesthetic reasons and I wanted unspecified ‘squiggly’, decorative bits along the sides to look attractive but also to help entwine the climbers.

I investigated Harrod Horticultural’s versions but, much as I like them for certain things, I decided their arches would be too expensive and not individual, ‘squiggly’, or decorative enough.

Alan the blacksmith, who is four doors down my track, had already hand made two fixtures for bells outside my front and kitchen doors and the bits to hang the gates properly at the end of the garden – really cost-effectively. So I asked him to quote on the arches. He was completely undaunted by the concept, quoted, and I said yes.

He measured, then designed and built the entire structure in almost no time – and I love it to bits. The creation of it is in the video and I can’t enthuse enough about how wonderful it is to see a real blacksmith working at his art and trade, at a fire and anvil. He makes many of his own tools and uses adapted Victorian machinery in a black-smoked forge filled with horseshoes, forks and other garden implements that need straightening, and all the other things he is in the process of creating. It looks very ‘not of this era’ and is all the more wonderful for that.

It’s also thrilling to have something so important and major in the garden made by someone four doors down the track – it reminds me of being in India or Africa. There, you can just imagine and design what you want and there’s always someone round the corner who will build it for you. In London this just doesn’t happen. Here, at last again, it seems par for the course. We have so many skilled and talented craftspeople around here – blacksmiths, woodworkers/carpenters, artists etc. (wait for the bridge blog). In fact I have discovered it's much easier here to find someone to build you a wall, bridge or rose parade than it is to find someone to turn a bathroom into a wetroom with shower!

Alan is also perhaps one of the tallest men I have ever met at 6'7" and he has hands which each could easily cup a watermelon. He is also a natural on camera. In the video above he gives a totally professional voice-over on what he’s doing, completely unrehearsed.

He and Dermot then spent a day erecting the finished item digging it deep into the ground. At one point Alan popped away "to make a bespoke arch for each side-path-joining element" he told me. This was not part of the brief, just something he concocted so tall people wouldn't hit their heads if they went onto the lawn or into the veg bed from the parade. How fab is that?  OK, I might have said something like "that line of bars looks a bit low across the side paths" but I had no solution. At this point I was merely a bystander watching an artist create something in minutes that not only solved the problem but enhanced the overall design.

Initially, as created, the structure was silver/black. The iron is not protected so is already rusting and going a fantastic dull orange that matches the bricks and gravel and makes it blend in wonderfully. Indeed a number of recent visitors (I've had lots) such as: members of the Donheads Gardening Club  - the first gardening club I have ever been a member of - and others who came to take away some of my excess horse manure and compost; delivery men and women who arrive in huge lorries to bring scalpings, sand, top soil, gravel etc and who now know me well and ask to see the development of the garden, plus family, friends and acquaintances generally have already asked if I got it from a reclamation yard – result! It already looks like a Victorian rose arch parade to match this Victorian (1880) cottage. Alan has also now made me a single version to go across the other path and it balances the aspect beautifully.

The rose arch parade

The rose arch parade planting has a colour scheme of course  - you'd expect no less of me I hope! At this (the kitchen) end  - which to the right of the pic above - it starts in white and pale yellows and moves through mid yellows and buffs to oranges and then bright reds. Across the mini path divide it starts in dark pinks and mellows through medium pinks to light pinks. Complementary, non climbing, bush/shrub/hybrid teas are planted in the long border between them and are being inter-planted with herbaceous plants, perennials, bulbs and ground cover.

The arches are also planted with Lonicera Americana and Graham Thomas, Wisteria floribunda (white and blue), and many mauve/blue/purple Clematis including Daniel Deronda, Lasurstern, North star, Mrs Cholmondley, Kinju Atarishi, and Wisley. These are mostly large flowered, summer ones but I shall add my favourite Viticellas later when they become available in the garden centres, nurseries and fairs. At ground level, along the path edges, I am interspersing various light shade tolerant blue Geraniums (such as Brookside and Rozanne) and yellow grasses.

To try and give you an idea of the effect of the roses left and right along the parade see the pic below. Imagine the top ones are North (by the swing seat and pond) and the bottom ones are South, nearest the house. (Apologies - I created this montage in Powerpoint so I could put them all together easily but it means the photo resolution isn't great but I hope you get the idea!)

They are all repeat flowering, scented, climbing roses. Many are David Austin, new English roses - but not all. Many I have grown before (the ones marked with * I haven't) but the conditions and aspect here are very different so it will be interesting to see how they do. I’ll have to wait a few years to judge. Roses, especially climbing ones, take 3-5 years, at least, to get established.

The shrub/hybrid tea roses in the long border to complement them are: Arthur Bell (because he is early, strong, upright and well scented), Westerland for its lax habit and beautifully loose, fabulously coloured form; Indian Summer (to remind me of my five years in wonderful Bombay/Mumbai - and it looks and smells fab too); Queen of Sweden (for one of my best friends, Ann W,  who I met in Mumbai when she and I were almost the only professional, corporate, working expat women there. Luckily we got on splendidly after a few fights about boyfriends!); The Pilgrim (for its astounding beauty and scent); and Abraham Derby (because it looks fab and I have never grown it before).

The roses up the single arch are my trusty Phyllis Bide and a new, shortish rambler The Lady of Lake, with semi-double, small light pink flowers and golden anthers.

Rosa Phyllis Bide (short rambler)

Rosa The Lady of the Lake (short rambler)

And of course there are roses elsewhere too. These include:

In the Kennet Bed : Eglantyne (she is very gracious and scented), Scentsation (huge, mound-forming, floriforous and very scented with hybrid tea-style flowers on a floribunda), Glauca (for its fabulous arching shape and green/grey foliage, small single flowers and plentiful, small hips) , Pretty Lady (for her size, beauty and scent),  The Lady Gardener who is quite new and certainly new to me but looks and smells lovely apparently; and a Rosa Rugosa (for the insects and enormous hips).

Closer to the house, in the terrace bed which gets a fair bit of light shade, I have planted three R. Bonica which is a sort of ground cover rose that does well in shade and three R. Champagne Moment (which did so well in my North facing site in London).

Rosa Bonica

Rosa Champagne Moment

In the Zen bed (which is mostly full of dwarf conifers and unusual Erica, a trickling water feature and a number of statues) I have planted climbing Rosa Super Elfin (scarlet) to grow up next door's trees (mine aren't large enough yet to support climbers) and three ground cover roses: one Cambridgeshire (scarlet, gold and pink) and  two Rushing stream (pale pink/white with yellow anthers). Super Elfin did well for me in London after a slow start but I have never grown proper ground cover roses before so this is an experiment.

(Top = R. Super Elfin. Bottom left R. Cambridgeshire. Bottom right "R. Rushing Stream")

I have also added R.Blush Noisette to the veg bed fence. She should be vigorous and cover well, is small flowered but sweetly scented and very pretty as below.

And, the major decision about which rose to put up the front of the house has been made. Madame Alfred Carriere has been planted deep in the gravel to which I have had to add all sorts of good stuff, Q4 and microrhyzal fungi again. There is no ready-made bed so I hope she can find her way and thrive with what I hope is a good start for her. She grows to 15ft and I wanted a tall, well scented, repeating rose that is not a rambler. I hope she fits the bill and I hope I have given her enough soil and food to thrive on before she digs down into the clay herself for extra minerals etc... New wires on the front of the house are there to welcome her as she climbs. Let's wish her well. We'll see.

Which brings me to planting roses. Every single rose planted so far has been given the best possible start in life. First off I have spent gazillions on improving the soil. Then, when I plant, I soak them in water in a bucket (but beware, this can be tricky with new, early season, pot-based, climbing roses whatever their labels say 'cos their soil base falls apart with too much water - it's much easier with bare root ones. My advice is don't over-water early season roses in pots (Feb to April) prior to planting. Water them very well afterwards.)

Then I dig a wide, deep hole, add a good rose/shrub or multi-purpose compost and Q4 fertiliser at the base and mix it so nothing can "burn" any roots.  When I am sure I have the right level (I tend to bury the graft union) I then add micorrhizal funghi to the base of the hole and roots. (I swear by the stuff for all major perennial plants, shrubs and trees. I am convinced they establish faster with it.) Then I put more good compost around the rootball, firm it in gently all round, then cover with the other soil etc.. I then water well ie drench (which means at least one big watering can-full per rose). Planting is really the same whether we have had rain or not. However much rain we have had it is important to water after planting so that the soil/compost moves around and doesn't leave air pockets underground around the roots.

So, to date, I have planted over 40 roses and have four that have come with me in pots.  In my much smaller garden in London I had over 30 roses so this does not frighten me. I just pray they like this much improved soil as much as they did my London clay. They seem to be shooting well so I have high hopes, though not R. High Hopes yet!  Time will tell.