Spring has arrived with the seasonal promise of warmer days and floral beauty everywhere you look. The long, wet winter has finally come to an end, but nature, in true Spring style, has kept us wondering daily about what season we are in.
Winter has been spectacular, quite cold as expected, with many days of thick frost followed by brilliant, clear skies and glorious sunshine in the garden. I’m getting ahead of myself in our cool climate, as we may experience more cold snaps and frost, although I hope that last weekend of August will be the grand finale for winter 2025.
This week alone, we have enjoyed the warmth of sunshine-filled days and cloudless skies, thick frost, and cold mornings. To top off the final stages of winter, last Saturday we woke to a pristine white snow-covered garden – beautiful.
Apart from lingering wintery conditions at times the tell-tale signs of nature’s movement are evident in the garden: the perennials are beginning to peek out, the winter-flowering gems of Lavender, Hellebores, and Daphne are in bloom, and the Magnolia and Clematis almost flowering.
Ernest Hemingway
When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.
The roses are poised and awaiting more warmth to fully leaf up after late pruning. Life is returning to the plant world slowly but surely, and dormancy is over. The roses always look spectacular after dormancy with such glossy, perfect foliage.
This is always terrific to see, especially after planting bare-root roses that look so ordinary as dormant sticks in the ground. It is heartwarming to see them come to life. The anticipation of the new season is palpable.
Our cool climate allows us to take it gently rather than rush to join the flurry of Spring, but enjoy a slower more gradual start to the season. With Australia’s high temperatures Spring can, in some regions feel as if it only lasts a few days before dry winds blow the blossoms away, and summer kicks in.
Gertrude S Wister
The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size.
Both the new bare-root roses and the garden pruned roses will take several more weeks of growth before any rose buds appear. The slower spring transition, combined with our high altitude and dramatic weather (last week we had days of 18 degrees and then back to only 6 degrees and snowfall), requires more patience for gardening in a cool climate.
This season, after careful consideration of rose placement, several roses were relocated, and I’ve planted a border in a restricted palette across the front. The palette although not all white has a dominance of lighter hues and many white flowering roses and plants.
Ice Princess Roses-Korettiflus is one, a Kordes, Floribunda, which is a bee-friendly rose with open cupped blooms in white with pink edges. Ice Princess is also known as ‘Eisprinzessin’ in Germany, where it was bred by W. Kordes & Sons in 2002. It was introduced to Australia by Treloars in 2015.
Ice Princess is a lovely low-growing rose I have grown previously, and the shrubs are well-shaped, growing to only 80 -100 cm, so perfect for a border of white.
Lucy Maude Montgomery
That is one good thing about this world … there are always sure to be more springs.
Why Plant White in the Garden
White flowers and white roses may appear to be a bland choice for a garden but they are incredibly versatile with many features to balance and harmonise the garden. My first thought on planting more white shrubs was to make the garden appear larger. There are many other benefits of white gardens;
White has a lightening effect that creates an expanded feel making the garden seem airy, light and open.
White in the garden can create an elegant, serene space where the reflective quality of white will lift the garden and provide a unique, vibrant wow factor
White is not just white there are hundreds of shades of white that can alter the mood and tone of the garden from cool to warm; pristine white, ivory, cream, eggshell, vanilla, smoky white, alabaster, pearl, blush, luminous, glacial, chalky, oyster, greenish white and bluish white.
White plants or soft grey and silver foliage can calm an overly bright area.
White in the garden will unify the elements of a garden and create a restful area for the eye to settle.
White will brighten shady areas and cool hot dry areas of the garden.
White will break up all the various shades of green from large shrubs and trees providing a subtle contrast; white bark, white garden accessories or whitish groundcovers and foliage.
White flowers planted along a path or entranceway will glow in the evening light, and be helpful to add illumination at night.
“I am trying to make a grey, green, and white garden. This is an experiment which I ardently hope may be successful, though I doubt it … All the same, I cannot help hoping that the great ghostly barn owl will sweep silently across a pale garden, next summer, in the twilight — the pale garden that I am now planting, under the first flakes of snow.”
Vita Sackville West
Behind the border of white roses I have planted the standard roses of Grand Siecle, Mother’s Love, Aotearoa, Souvenir de Louis Amade and Belle de Signeur roses. The rose selection is light in various shades of pink to peach and all are fragrant.
The Grand Siecle Rose is one I’m particularly hopeful for, as it was a favourite in our rural garden grown as a shrub rose. This time I’m trying it as a standard as it’s a very bushy well-branched rose and the standard version will provide the gorgeous blooms but be confined somewhat.
Grand Siecle is a pink blend Hybrid Tea rose from the Delbard Grand Parfums Collection. Bred in France by George Delbard in 1976 – DELegran. The roses are elegant, with cream, pale pink double blooms that become blush towards the edges. It has a magnificent, heady perfume, is disease-resistant and hardy, and repeat flowers through the season. One seed parent of Grand Siecle is the robust, healthy rose Queen Elizabeth – Lammerts 1951.
Belle du Signeur is also a favourite Hybrid Tea Delbard rose we did not relocate to our new garden. Belle du Seigneur is a more yellow, peachy, pink and at times ochre or bronze in colouring. Bred in France by George Delbard in 1993, also in the Grand Parfums Collection. It has a strong heady berries and apple scent, the new tips are bronze in colour and the foliage once it is out will be glossy.
Harriet Ann Jacobs
The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.
Another rose for this season is Elysium Fields– KORknysna, a Floribunda shrub rose bred by W. Kordes & Sons, Germany in 2001. It is known as Knysna in South Aftrica and Elysium Fields in Australia – 2017.
The blooms on Elysium Fields are large, and many in orange-pink tones. The roses begin cupped and as they age they open out flat. Unlike the other new roses this one has no scent but makes up for any lack of perfume with it’s prolific flowering ability.
Gardening and being outside in nature is wonderful at present – a joy and relief too after the hibernation of winter. There is such an expectant air in spring that you don’t know what nature will bring in relation to the weather.
As gardeners, we all prepare seeds, plants, and bulbs, then wait patiently and hope that growth burgeons but, it is ultimately, out of our control how the new landscape will unfold. Nonetheless, a magical experience to witness every spring.
Content Di Baker 2025
Images Di Baker or as cited September 2025
Title quote unknown