Issue link: http://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/85232
056: pinklifestyle roses I don't see the point of a garden without Tradescant by Sally Tagg NOVEMBER 18: I love this time of the year, even though I get next to nothing done, indoors or out. When Lucas is asleep, I head into the garden with the best of intentions to weed, prune, plant and sow . . . only to find myself wandering about absent-mindedly snipping sweet peas, tickling the wayward tendrils of my hop vines back into line, or sinking my nose deep into David Austin's most fragrant roses. I don't see the point of roses without scent, just as I don't see the point of a garden without roses. I'm not talking about those prissy hybrid teas and fancy floribundas either. I've gone for a mix of voluptuous modern English roses and old-fashioned heritage roses that ooze history and have intoxicating, biblical-sounding scents like myrrh and musk. There were a number of roses in the garden when I moved here, and I've retained all the ones that I liked, though – like the house – they've been shuffled into new positions. (Two weeks after I met Jason, he hired a crane and hauled his teeny-tiny 70-square-metre house 35 metres to the west to clear a building site for a new dwelling. I put paid to that plan by suggesting, instead, a huge garden with a cricket-pitch-sized formal lawn edged with stone kerbing. Will we build a bigger house in the future? And ruin my $3000 lawn? I think not.) I've planted two dozen roses in a 3 metrewide rock-walled bed that Variegata di Bologna by Lynda Hallinan runs the length of the stables. When it's time to prune, I start at one end and work my way, painfully, to the other. The bed's far too deep to be practical. By late spring it's impossible to fight through the thorny canes to whip out any weeds or stake my dahlias and by the end of summer I have to employ longhandled loppers to clear an access route through the middle. But for now, it's sensational. I made another rather amateur error when ordering my roses. I Reproduced with permission from Back to the Land by Lynda Hallinan. Published by Penguin Group NZ. RRP $45.00. Copyright © Lynda Hallinan, 2012. See individual images for photographer Photography copyright © Sally Tagg, 2012 Photography copyright © Lynda Hallinan, 2012Day' scoured the Trinity Farm and Tasman Bay Rose catalogues for flowers in pale pink, dark pink, striped pink and deep burgundy, but now that they're in bloom, I can't tell my 'Charles de Mills' from my 'Chianti'. At least there's no confusing 'William Shakespeare 2000' with 'William Lobb'. The latter is a heritage moss rose and sports stems and buds with a peculiar coat of stubble that's often mistaken for a severe infestation of aphids.