A spray of pressed flowers

If you love flowers and gardens, flower pressing makes the most perfect hobby.

It’s both stimulating and therapeutic and it will give you all the scope you’ll ever need to express your creativity.

And you’ll be using the loveliest materials that nature has to offer.

Pressed flowers can easily be sourced from your own garden.

And you don’t need to plant anything special either.

Your garden will provide you with all the material you need.

You can learn how to press flowers quickly. And once you know how, there’s no end to the variety of ways in which you can use your pressed flowers.

Artistic collages of pressed flowers and greenery make the loveliest greeting cards and wedding invitations. 

Pressed flower pictures are ideal for decorating bedrooms.  You can even use them to decorate telephone directories and photo albums.

Of course, flower pressing is not only limited to flowers.  You can also use pressed leaves, grasses, tendrils and ferns.

You can even use carrot tops and tiny seeds as well as stamens and bits of bark. Fine seed heads of ordinary lawn grasses and even little patches of lichen give added interest.

And don’t spurn the different types of weeds either. You’ll be amazed to see how well some of them press.  Many of them are quite pretty so you just need a good eye and a bit of imagination.

There’s so much scope for experimenting and that’s really half the fun.

Photo courtesy photos-public-domain.com

I found this great chart about the best apples to use for cooking and baking. It’s a very helpful guide because it’s so easy to get unstuck when you use the wrong variety.

For example, when making an apple sauce, if you use the the type of apple that doesn’t break up, you end up with a lumpy sauce.

And speaking of sauces I find that the best apple to use is Granny Smith because it makes a fine, smooth sauce with a sharp tang.

I also use Granny Smith apples for baking.  No need to add sugar either.  Just take out the core and replace it with a  few seedless raisins.

Works every time!

And by the way when I bake an apple pie I like to use Golden Delicious apples because they keep their shape and don’t break up! Now I don’t mean the whole apple if that’s what it sounds like – I slice them up into thin wedges!

Here is the chart :

Courtesy: http://pocketchangegourmet.com/the-definitive-guide-to-apples-and-their-uses/

The irises are the bearded hybrid variety and they don’t stop blooming. The colour combination is particularly striking too.

If you click the  picture you will be able to see a bigger photo which will give you a much better idea of the impact of the  contrasting colours.

I wrote in a  post some time ago that my irises were being decapitated by birds.  And that has continued for a few years in  succession.

Fortunately, this year there seems to have been no such massacre of my flowers.

I can only put it down to the good rains we had and also I have watered abundantly with an irrigation system.

There were so many flowers and roses this season that the birds didn’t need to forage for food among my irises.

Though I do have to admit that right in the beginning of the season when the irises first appeared, I  covered the large prize blooms with plastic sandwich bags.  And as I lifted the bags the huge flowers unfolded before my eyes.

It was quite an experience to watch – like those slow motion movies that show the unfurling of flowers except that this was in real time!

Striking Colour combinations in the Garden
I love using unconventional colour combinations in the garden and this one of deep blue, yellow and orange has been very successful and striking.  It creates quite a focal point in the landscape.

On the other hand I also like the gentler combinations of pink and orange.

To achieve this I have massed floribunda roses such as Deloitte and Touche together with  Amarula Profusion. Really lovely!

I had heard that rose hips are very rich in Vitamin C so I checked and lo and behold there are a number of rose hip syrup recipes that are used and made by those in the know.

How to use Rose Hip Syrup

The syrup can be diluted with water to make a refreshing cold drink. You can also pour the syrup neat onto your breakfast pancakes or waffles for a delicious and health-giving treat.

Some of the rose hip syrup recipes that I’ve seen are rather lengthy and they put me off because I like quick and easy solutions.

So here is a simplified version:

Rose Hip Syrup Recipe

• Wash and trim about a kilo of rosehips. Pop them into a blender and process till they are a coarse mush. I would process half at a time so as not to overload your blender.
• Put the rosehip pulp into a covered pot and boil for about 20 minutes. Remove from stove and strain the liquid through a clean muslin cloth.
•  Add sugar and boil for another 5 minutes. Cool and bottle. Keep in the refrigerator and use as desired.

Let me know how you like it!

You may remember that last winter I told you about my rose pruning effort and how I had engaged a professional rose pruner to help me.

The thought of pruning all my roses was a little intimidating at the time – but if truth be told I suspect that I was simply too lazy.

Well, pruning day arrived and the professional pruner brought some tools and some loppers and proceeded to lop off my roses in a most frightening manner.

All I could do was to stand by and watch helplessly – and hope that he knew more about pruning than I did.

I was wrong. I know now that I knew better. Much better.

At this point I can only refer to the lines of Elizabeth Barrett Browning because they explain exactly how I felt:

“High on the shore sat the great god Pan
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.”

I return to my story.

I had told him how high I wanted my bushes to be and he lopped them off to the required height and quite a bit more for good measure.

He didn’t even prune to an outgoing eye as this was regarded as last century retro thinking.

Oh well.  He was the experienced expert so I left him, made myself a cup of tea and peeped through the kitchen window to view the mayhem.

He finished the job in about an hour and a half – and to give him  some small credit – it would have taken me a week and a half to get my rose garden completely pruned.

OK so what were the final results of the rose pruning?

Well there was no major damage to report except for the massacre of my lovely “Double Delight” which took a real beating.  Such a beating in fact, that she still looks sad and hasn’t recovered her earlier vigour.

I can promise you that this pruning season I will tend her myself and prune very lightly indeed and only remove the dead bits. In another year she should recover.

But I’ll tell you one thing.  Never again will I let anyone near my roses.  Even if it takes me a month to prune them myself, I will do a few roses every day and get through the task my way.

A lesson learnt. Don’t presume that all so-called rose experts know a lot more than you do. Sometimes you as the garden owner have a better and more sympathetic understanding of your own roses.

Garden Queen - a true queen among roses

The top five roses in my garden include 3 hybrid teas and two floribundas.

I’m sorry that this article is limited to only 5 roses but you have to stop somewhere and the list could go on and on.

If you asked me to choose another 5 favourite roses I could do so  with ease.

But let’s take a look at my top five roses for today only – because tomorrow I could change my mind as there are so many to choose from.

So here they are:

My top five roses

Mr Lincoln -  a very large deep red rose
Double Delight – red. white and pink popular rose
Garden Queen – pinkish mauve – hard to describe but it’s lovely!
My Granny – pink pom-poms all over the bush
Deloitte & Touche – pink and orange roses and buds in profusion

• I have chosen Mr Lincoln because the bush is huge and so are the roses. I like a large, healthy rose tree rather than those spindly bushes that have been pruned back to the ground. (And I will talk about my pet pruning gripe another time.)  Mr Lincoln is a dramatic red rose with a wonderful scent and is completely trouble free in my garden.  It never complains and it gives me bunch after bunch of huge, sweet-smelling red roses for the vase.

• Double Delight is a firm favourite not only with me but with rose lovers all over the world.  This beautiful red, pink and white rose is generously displayed all over a strong growing rose bush. The scent is superb and the bush is large and healthy. It always seems to be in bloom. Lovely roses for the vase too.

• Garden Queen is another huge hybrid tea rose – in fact, it’s the biggest rose in my garden. The colour is a dark pink that tends almost to mauve. The bush is large and healthy  and grows extremely well if it gets enough water. It is also disease resistant. Garden Queen is a rose with the “wow” factor. And the perfume is irresistible.  A truly “wow” rose.

• And now we have two of my favourite floribundas.  I have  many more but today I will stick to two.  My Granny is such a generous bloomer that you simply have to love her.  The rose  is covered all year  round in medium-sized, pink pom-poms.  As they fall off so new pom-poms are produced in clusters.  They are low growing, profuse and always in bloom. I have these planted all along a black wrought iron, dividing garden  fence. And the sight is truly lovely.

• Deloitte & Touche is a firm favourite world-wide – and with reason. I have a  group of five of these floribundas grouped together in the lawn on a bank and it is always a mass of colour.  Against the green lawn this is a stunning display.  I have found the bushes to be amazingly healthy. They grow at an even knee-length height and they are simply covered with trusses of pink and pale orange blooms.

Try any of these roses and you won’t be disappointed. They are all healthy, easy growing and prolific.  What more can you ask for in a rose?  And to cap it all, the hybrid teas I mentioned are in my list of top ten fragrant roses.

So there you have it.  A personal description of the top five roses in my garden.

Bougainvillea and petrea planted together make a great team and create a dramatic impact with their colourful display.   They are ideal shrub mates as they come into flower at exactly the same time.

Here is a lovely corner in my garden where bougainvillea and petrea are blooming together.

Both these shrubs like a position in full sun so they are perfect planting mates.  But best of all, they come into flower at exactly the same time in spring.  And they certainly give a glorious display with their mountains of red and purple flowers side by side.

Many gardeners are hesitant about planting these prolific shrubs as they think they are too overbearing for smaller gardens.  But it’s a pity to lose out on such a dramatic show of colour as these two shrubs can give you. So here are a few tips to help you keep them beautiful but under control.

Grow Large Shrubs in Containers

Luckily these strong shrubs can be heavily pruned back to the size that is most suitable for your garden. In fact they can also be grown in containers which will automatically restrict the size of the plant to something much more manageable.

Here is a red bougainvillea that has been growing in a container for about six years and as you can see it is still very manageable. Even though bougainvilleas are notoriously rampant growers, I haven’t had to prune it back because the pot is keeping it in shape.

Red bougainvillea against a white wall

You can always try these climbers in pots first to check their habit of growth.  Then if you would prefer a more dramatic show you can transfer them to the garden proper.

Submerge pots under the ground

Here’s a tip for you if you prefer a more natural look for your garden without containers but still want to control the growth of your climbers: simply plant your climbers in their respective pots and submerge these under the ground till you can’t see the rim of the pot.

Then water as usual.  In this way the rampant growth of these climbers will be restricted and they will never grow wildly out of control.

I have had success with both these shrubs at the coast and inland so I have found them to be suitable for most climates.

Do write and tell me about your own experiences with bougainvillea and petrea in your garden.

My clematis is so completely covered in these sky blue flowers that you can hardly see the leaves.

I had no idea that any clematis could be so prolific. Well it is – and I can only gaze in admiration.

Last night it rained heavily and I thought the flowers would be scattered on the ground but by this morning after only one or two casualties it is as bright as ever. To prove it to you I took this photo – after the rain.

As you can see I planted the clematis in a large pot but I have trained some of the tendrils along the black wrought iron fence behind it.

Now this clematis has had a rather interesting history.  I bought it about two years ago as a young sapling with three plate-sized flowers.

It grew well and by the end of the summer it needed secure staking.  But then winter came and robbed it of every bit of greenery. It looked like a mound of dry sticks. All the stalks were dry and lifeless. So I cut it right down to the base and hoped it would survive.

By spring, my clematis, undeterred, began to grow shoots from the base. And during summer we had quite a nice show.

This recent winter it was very cold and frosty and once again the clematis was reduced to a mound of dry sticks.  But this time I decided not to prune at all so I only removed the dry leaves. The sticks seemed deader than ever but I decided to wait it out.

And what luck that I did!

Spring swept in quickly

And the clematis sprang to life in a matter of days.  Every dead stalk sprouted leaves and buds in quick succession.  There were fat buds all over the plant, peeping out from every possible corner and crevice.

And overnight they burst open into this spectacular display of blue flowers.

So now I am left with the question – is pruning such a desirable thing after all?

It’s a question that I will be looking at more closely when I chat about the results of the vicious pruning that my roses endured during July.

And about that litter of clematis babies that I told you about last time – well I have managed to propagate a lovely new plant – pictures to follow in due course. She isn’t very photogenic yet!

If you have had any experience with clematis, please tell me about it.  Any tips will be most welcome.  As I mentioned previously, clematis is rather new to me as we had previously lived at the coast.

So all you clematis lovers out there please pop in with any tips or advice because I have become an ardent fan!

My roses have grown well and I always buy a few new ones each year so my rose bushes have grown considerably both  in number and in size.

Not surprisingly, when pruning time came around this year, the prospect of pruning them myself was a little daunting.

In the past, I have always spread my rose pruning over a few days – a system that made my job a lot easier. But the downside is that it affects the blooming time if you prune at different times. This year I didn’t want to stagger the pruning as I want to have a big flush of roses in October.

In addition to this, my Mr Lincoln has grown to an enormous height – about 17 -20 feet and the canes are not canes but veritable tree trunks. The thought of pruning this monster was more than a little daunting.

So these are all my reasons for deciding to call in:

A Professional Rose Pruner

Well he arrived with all the necessary paraphernalia and I sat down with a cup of tea and watched him in silent triumph! This was the way to do it!

Fantastic! He went through the whole lot in about an hour and a half. He lopped off all the heavier canes in a matter of seconds. I was very impressed.

However!

When I checked the results after he left it seemed as if he had used a hedge cutter on my roses. It looked like a massacre. A fiasco. My beautiful rose canes had been chopped off mercilessly.

For a full week I couldn’t look at the rose bushes. I didn’t even inspect them to see if any shoots had appeared. And I swore I would never go the lazy route again.

Another however!

It is now a month later and spring has officially arrived. My roses have sent out shoots in all directions and I’m relieved to report that everything looks rather healthy.

With one important distinction.

In addition to the new leaves that are sprouting, most of the rose bushes are now sending out marvelous red shoots from their bases.

These will be the new canes that are every rose grower’s dream. In fact I love to see shoots like these even more than the flowers themselves because they hold so much promise for the new season.

So it remains to be seen if this was indeed a pruning fiasco or a fortunate mistake on my part.

It’s just remotely possible that this was a mistake that I may wish to repeat next year.

I’ll keep you posted about my rose pruning experiment.

When to prune roses depends on so many things: the weather, the location, the variety of rose and so on.

But as a rule of thumb,  I generally wait till the end of July until the danger of late frosts is past. During July, you never can be quite sure of the weather.

The problem with pruning too early is that the new growth is very tender and frost can kill off all the baby leaf shoots overnight and that would be a setback for the rose bush, causing die-back and a host of other problems.

Optimally, it’s best to prune just before the roses feel the first growing surge of spring.  As you know, gardening has a lot to do with feeling!

Meanwhile, I’ll sniff the air and wait for the first whiff of spring to alert me to “spring” into action!

But right now it’s a good time to sharpen shears, take out my elbow-length pruning gloves and check my rose bushes for fattening leaf buds on the canes.

Fattening Leaf Buds

A rose leaf bud starting to fatten

As soon as you see the leaf buds starting to swell it means that they are getting ready to burst into young leaves.

I don’t really go by dates.  Some gardeners insist that you should be pruning roses by the 15^th of July. But I think it’s more important to take a close look at the conditions in your own garden.

If your rose bushes still look as if they are in deep hibernation then it’s a pity to wake them up so ruthlessly!  It’s much better to wait until they show signs of stirring.

Also I still have plenty to do because we have a lot of compost at the bottom of the garden from last year’s leaves so I will be incorporating some of that into the garden beds.

What about a gardening service for pruning?

Every year we somehow collect a few more rose bushes. The result is that it’s becoming more and more difficult to prune them all.

This year I have been thinking about asking a gardening service to do my pruning.  But the problem is that I’m so fussy about my roses that I don’t know if I can trust anyone to prune my roses for me.

The idea would be to try to find a pruning expert I can trust – which isn’t always possible. The problem is, even if I could find such an expert, I know I would hover around suspiciously and offer my unwanted advice while trying to disguise my anxiety!

Light Pruning

I prefer to prune lightly. I know there’s a school of thought that advises heavy pruning. These people like shorter bushes so that the roses are easier to reach for picking – but that is a matter of choice, I suppose.

I don’t like to make the rose bushes suffer more than is necessary. I think they need a strong infrastructure to prepare themselves for the new growing season.

I like big rose bushes that look happy and healthy rather than the chopped-down versions that have to battle so hard to send out new canes.

If you have any preferences about rose pruning do share your experience and knowledge here! There is always something to learn.