Presently, it is the height of summer, and despite Orange being a cool climate, this week is more typical of the central west: dry, with long, cloudless, sunny days and higher-than-usual temperatures. Gorgeous, but not so great for plants that are being scorched by the intense afternoon sun.
During such a hot week, any garden work after all the necessary watering was done early in the morning, including deadheading hundreds of rose blooms. This task has an inbuilt incentive: once the spent flowers are gone, the plant can regrow and produce more roses through to Autumn, plus its an enjoyable task to inspect the roses up close and view new buds coming.
Like most gardeners, I am very critical of my garden and find it hard to see whether, overall, one has been successful or at least on the way. As the anonymous quote above says, “I keep planting things, and they keep growing”, so I guess for me too, I must be getting somewhere, the roses continue to bloom and the bees are happy.
I overheard a passerby and a young child yesterday, out on a morning dog walk, oohing and aahing at the roses along the outside fence area of my garden. It was lovely to hear appreciation for the beauty of a garden you have planted and nurtured.
There are plenty of stunning roses out in large clumps, and only a few are struggling from dry weather, but overall, most are thriving; Just Joey, The Peace Rose, Princess Charlene de Monaco, Tangles, Madame Delbard, Duet, Jubilee Celebration, La Vi en Rose, Scentimental and Claude Monet roses.
Courtney’s Rose, The Endeavour, and Jubilee Celebration are well protected, have avoided sun damage, and look healthy and lush. I’ve had some fabulous success too this week with a few potted Lady of Shalott roses and an Olivia Rose Austin that suddenly appeared with dry, crisp, pale sickly leaves. On closer inspection of the underside of the leaves, it was red spider mites sucking all the nutrients out. The first remedy is to spray them hard with water, especially the undersides of all the foliage, and increase watering. They are now lush and on the mend, with plenty of red-tipped new foliage.
The rose that is simply stunning at this time of summer is the That’s Life Rose. It is the most chameleon-style rose, flowering nonstop and gorgeous, It is glowing in golds and pinks presently and will gradually turn to a more subdued, subtle colouring, ending in pastel soft shades of pink, blush, peach, and cream.
Victor Hugo
“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”
I adore this rose not only for its beauty and ever-changing kaleidoscope of colours, but also for its hardiness and disease resistance; it needs only deadheading the mass of roses. That’s Life dominates the garden as a large, prolific, beautiful shrub covered in blooms that will continue until late Autumn.
Towering above That’s Life rose is a neighbouring rose – Carmagnole that together create a magnificent focal point in the centre of the garden where the blooms appear to be climbing and intertwining through the tree above. The blooms will hardly stop flowering now until winter chill begins.
Only when your love of roses is greater than your fear of thorns can you grow a beautiful garden. –
Matshona Dhliwayo
“If you want to have a beautiful garden you need to have a strong desire and can deal with the fact that this desire will never be fulfilled and you experience that as something beautiful and special rather than frustrating.”
One of the new hybrid Tea roses in the garden this season is ‘In Appreciation Rose’. In Appreciation was bred by Hans Jürgen Evers in Germany in 1987 and introduced to Australia by Nieuwesteeg Rose Nursery Pty Ltd in 2004 as ‘In Appreciation’. Apart from the exceptional luminous colouring this rose brings to the garden, it also has a strong fragrance, and will grow with a free-branching habit to 1.4 metres.
Lastly, there is Scentimental Rose. I’m chuffed to see and enjoy the scent of this rose that is out again in the garden. Last year it flowered profusely in late Spring, then was eaten by snails and developed some black spot which causes loss of foliage, so it never really flowered again very well. It is a highly fragrant rose with unique hand-painted blooms that are never the same- a mixture of burgundy red, white, pink, and magenta. Scentimental is a Floribunda rose that may be compact in size, but certainly not in fragrance and colouring. It has the registration name WEKplapep and was bred by Tom Carruth in the USA in 1996.
“Flowers are not symbols of power. Flowers are too brief, too frail, to elicit much hope of eternity. In truth, flowers are far removed from the human condition and from all human hope. For a moment, in that moment, flowers are simply beautiful.”
Sharman Apt Russell – ‘Anatomy of a Rose
Content Di Baker 2026
Images in the Orange garden NSW 2026
Title quote unknown
