The January garden continues to be my place to enjoy the lazy days of summer and relax. The garden has come into its own, bursting with life, abundant and riotous. The new rose plants have improved the landscape, and all the work done in winter and spring has come together to create a peaceful haven and backdrop to everyday life.
Even a little pocket of garden can create an island of peace that helps us counteract the wear and tear of city life and feed our longing for contact with the natural world.
Sue Stuart-Smith
After only a short time, I’m happy with some aspects of the garden especially the Birch tree grove. This has created a quiet sanctuary for early morning tea and is a perfect spot for an evening glass of wine as the sun moves across the garden, bringing welcome afternoon shade on hot days. The Birch trees, viewed from inside, are also so uplifting, with their white trunks and lace-like foliage, and the porch is a go-to place for lunch or to sit and muse over what one might do tomorrow in the garden.
William Lawson
“A garden “makes all our senses swim in pleasure, and that with infinite variety.”
This summer, I’ve been more successful at balancing the urge to constantly be doing things with enjoying time in and with the garden. Perhaps because time has passed and the garden is slowly becoming more established. And it is thoroughly enjoyable to be out there and not feel that one has to be productive all the time.
“If we love Flowers, are we not ‘born again’ every Day,”
Emily Dickinson
Relaxing in a garden is not always easy. I can’t help but let my eyes roam the landscape, and I’m always on the lookout for which plants have lived up to my expectations. Is this one in the right position? Why isn’t it flowering? I’m in awe at times, yet also vexed that things do not consistently appear as I had envisaged when planting. On the other hand, there may be triumphs and areas where it is far better than imagined.
“wherever life can grow… it will sprout out, and do the best it can.”
Gwendolyn Brook
There are many jobs one can do in full summer, like hand-watering, weeding, deadheading and cleaning up after summer storms. No matter what aspect of enjoying a garden on any given day, we may choose, working or simply stopping for a moment to enjoy the birdsong, our gardens are a vivid reminder that surrounding oneself with beauty feeds the soul and nourishes us.
The first pure joy of the garden… weeding all day to finish the beds in a queer sort of enthusiasm which made me say this is happiness.
Virginia Wolf
The idleness of summer is a distraction from writing, even though so much has happened in the garden. For one, thanks to the previous owners’ clever planting, the fruit trees this year were heavily laden; the cherries, early on, were sweet and plump. The plums are not quite ready, although the birds think they are just right. Apricots are ripe in abundance if the parrots leave us any.
To garden is to make whole again what has been shattered: the relationships in which you are both producer and consumer, in which you reap the bounty of the earth directly, in which you understand fully how something came into being. It may not be significant in scale, but even if it’s a windowsill geranium high above a city street, it can be significant in meaning.
Rebecca Solnit
The roses are beginning to open again, and judging by the number of buds the next few weeks will bring an excess of colour and scent. There has been a lull in blooms after my summer trim but, now everyday more and more roses are appearing. One of the standout roses that is rarely out of flower is the Tangles rose.
Tangles is a florescent Floribunda shrub bred by Kordes in Germany. From season start to the end the Tangles rose provides a steady display of lilac-mauve blooms in clusters. Tangles is a great filler growing low to just 70-90 cm but spreads wide and, is charming and disease free.
“One lifetime is never enough to accomplish one’s horticultural goals. If a garden is a site for the imagination, how can we be very far from the beginning?”
Francis Cabot Lowell
The Soul Sister Rose is one that continues to be extraordinary; prolific blooms, healthy foliage and magical colouring that ranges from deep copper buds through bronze and latte ending with the softest most subtle mauve pink. It is an absolute gem of a rose.
If roses could talk, they would not boast of their beauty, because they know that they have always been beautiful.
Michael Bassey Johnson
Soul Sister is a Floribunda and the unique colouring is in classic high-pointed shaped blooms that capture perfectly the range of colours and the soft mauve lavender shade. I have had great success with Soul sister as a standard rose and both are rarely out of flower.
Gardening situates you in a different kind of time, the antithesis of the agitating present of social media. Time becomes circular, not chronological; minutes stretch into hours; some actions don’t bear fruit for decades. The gardener is not immune to attrition and loss, but is daily confronted by the ongoing good news of fecundity. A peony returns, alien pink shoots thrusting from bare soil. The fennel self-seeds; there is an abundance of cosmos out of nowhere
Olivia Laing
The heat of summer sun has bought out the The David Austin rose The Lady of Shalott, turning them a more vibrant orange that glows in all lights. It is my favourite rose with its loosely packed petals that form a chalice shape. Even as it fades the colours are exquisite, softer and more subtle but a real asset to the garden. Lady of Shalott will still thrive in partial shade or in large pots.
Joanne Barwick
“There’s little risk in becoming overly proud of one’s garden because gardening by its very nature is humbling. It has a way of keeping you on your knees.”
Title quote by Okakura Tenshin
Content Di Baker 2026
Images of Roses all from our garden in Orange NSW
