Wellington has four seasons. Sometimes it’s all in one day or all in one season, but there are four. At the moment it’s autumn. There are still clear days and days with gale force winds. There are days of rain, and I like these days. It rains so hard that the gutters spill over onto the street and the wheelbarrow becomes a pond. The worst days are the grey windy days. These are depressing.

The days are getting shorter. I need to buy a new headlamp because it’s dark in the forest in the morning. The only reason I’m in the forest is to take my dog for a run before work. I don’t mind the dark but I do mind the rats. Wellington has a lot of rats because it has a lot of forest. The worst part of running in the forest wearing a headlamp is what it does to an animals eyes. Animal eyes glow like round balls of fire. My dog looks rabid and the rats look like Satan’s little servants. As things turned out this week, the rats in the forest were the least of my worries. But more on that later.

I don’t know about you but I really like lists. Lists of anything.

A rose list and a list of rose maintenance tasks.

I bought the book ‘Look to the Rose’ By Sam McGredy because of the bits and pieces that had been left inside it. At one time it’d obviously been a much loved book, belonging to a very keen gardener.

A torn strip of paper bookmarked the rose Troika/ Royal Dane, which Sam McGredy called ‘One of the most exciting roses of the 1970s.’ There was a newspaper clipping on primulas at the inside front cover, a packet of collected ‘Himalayan lily’ seeds tucked between the pages, and right at the back were lists and lists of roses. Do gardeners still use a favourite garden book in this way? A handy place to store important planting plans, plant labels and garden lists.

I’ve been reading about roses lately and making lists of my own. Autumn is the time of year to order roses and bulbs. Two of the roses I ordered appear on this rose lover’s list: Wedding Day and Rambling Rector. I’ve gone a bit rose mad. My plan to have a leafy jungly garden have changed. Now I want a leafy jungle populated by roses and other cottage plants.

Every since I wrote the 3 blogs on the old roses at the Bolton Street Cemetery (BSC) I can’t stop thinking about roses. It was the first time I saw roses growing in a semi-wild setting where they were more-or-less left to fend for themselves. I’ve always always hankered for a wild romantic secret garden. The BSC was just such a garden. I saw how it was possible to grow roses alongside native trees and shrubs, of which my garden has many. At the BSC I got to know, and I mean really know, like you know a person, a lot of robust old roses that didn’t need to be cosseted and indulged. And most importantly these old roses had tons of character.

Here are a few photos that I had to leave out of my ‘Old Roses’ blogs.

I’ve got completely sidetracked. I’m 9 paragraphs into my introduction and I haven’t got to the point. I’m meant to be letting you know that this blog is all about lists. Here are 11 things (I much prefer odd numbers to even) that have been on my mind of late.

One: The Garden Trail

My friend Cheryl told me I ought to open up my garden for the local garden trail. Someone had recommended her garden and she wanted to recommend mine. ‘I will if you will’, I said. She did so I did. My garden was visited by two lovely gents from the Lion’s Club. One of them liked my oak tree and the other liked my dog. ‘Think up a description of your garden for the pamphlet,’ one of them said. ‘I’d include that oak tree.’

I have 6 months to get my garden shipshape. There’s something about a deadline that sharpens the mind and focuses the eye. Suddenly, everything becomes clear. All the jobs I keep putting off have to be done: paint the fence, move the fallen leaves, extend the clothesline garden, turn the fruit and herb garden into a rose fruit and herb garden, get cracking with the bin and sink garden, plant bulbs, sow seeds, take cuttings and buy more plants. Suddenly I feel motivated.

Two: Roses

I’m only going to talk about two sorts of roses - Hybrid Musks and roses that climb up trees. I’m not going to tell you how many roses I’ve planted in the last few months or how many more I’ve ordered. Let’s just say that the money I put aside for a new pair of winter boots has completely gone.

I live in a 1920s house and want to grow some roses from the early 1900s. I want roses that are evocative of English cottage styled gardens of that time. Roses that are relaxed and have personality. Roses that my nana would’ve had growing in her childhood garden. I want roses with the exotic scents of lemon, vanilla and myrrh - a sort of Jane Marple crossed with a character from the Arabian Nights. Hybrid Musks roses embody all of these things. Most were bred by Reverend Pemberton or the gardeners who worked for him.

Here’s a list of the Pemberton Hybrid Musks I have in my garden -

Buff Beuauty
Thisbe
Ballerina
Cornelia
Danae
Moonlight
Penelope
Prosperity

I have 3 more on order: Pax, Clytemnestra and Felicia

Ausonius (the pink rose above) was bred by a German rosarian called Peter Lambert. Mr Lambert also bred the rose ‘Trier’, which Rev. Pemberton used to breed many of his Musk Roses. I also have the rose Trier.

I’m running out of places to plant all the roses so I’ve decided to start growing roses up my trees. The first rose to be paired with a tree (a sycamore) is R. dupontii, a Species Rose with large musk-scented white flowers. At least what the label says. I can’t wait for spring.

In order to make room for all the new roses I’ve had to dig up other plants and give them away.

And can I say, that the hardest plant I’ve ever dug up is flax. It’s worse than digging up agapanthus, Fatsia japonica or astelia. And let me tell you, those three bushes are spade-breakers. Flax is an arm breaker. I had an enormous flax bush growing by my letter box. It hung over the driveway and made it hard to back the car out . The flax had long outgrown its site. I spent a few hours over a couple of weeks trying to weaken the flax bush, cutting back leaves and jumping up and down on its centre. Then I spent an entire day digging it up. By dinnertime my arms, from finger tips to shoulders, were screaming with pain. Every fibre of muscle, sinew, tendon and flesh had been stretched and ripped. Every joint had been pummelled. I washed some painkillers down with wine and I would’ve bawled my eyes out if I hadn’t been so tired.

That’s the thing with a suburban gardens, plants grow. And there are always going to be plants that get too big. Suburban gardening is all about fitting in as many plants as possible to blur the edge of the boundary. What this means is that the suburban gardener is constantly having to edit.

Three: Yarrow

I’m very sentimental about yarrow, especially the white common invasive kind, found on country roads in New Zealand. It reminds me of afternoon walks with my mother and sister when I was four.

I have that obsessive compulsive gene that all collectors are born with. I just have to have all the different varieties of yarrow - Alchillea. Here’s what I’ve planted in the last few months: Achillea Anthea, Achillea millefolium ‘Terracotta’, Achillea ‘Weser River Sandstone’, Achillea ‘Lavender and Lace’, Achillea millefolium ‘Gloria Jean’, Achillea ageratum ‘W.B. Childs’, Achillea filipendulina ‘Parker’s Variety’.

I don’t want to have drifts of exactly the same plant, where’s the fun in that. I want wild. I want bohemian. I want wild bohemian cottage.

Four: Books

These are the books I’ve been reading since I last posted.

Roses and Rose Gardens by Claire Masset, 2019. A gorgeous coffee table book with excellent information and stunning photographs. A National Trust book. Very inspiring.
The Pottery Gardener - Flowers and Hens at the Emma Bridgewater Factory by Arthur Parkinson, 2018. Another stunning coffee table book with great information and images. An excellent example of making beautiful gardens using rubbish bins, troughs and raised beds.
A Gentle Plea for Chaos by Mirabel Osler, 1989. A delightful book about the process of making a garden that is wild at heart and full of roses.
Visions of Roses by Peter Beales, photography by Vivian Russell, 1996. An absolute gem of a book for anyone who wants to learn about growing older roses. Peter travels around a diverse selection of European gardens (large and small, formal and wild) and talks about roses. Beautifully photographed.
The New Wild by Fred Pearce, 2015. A friend raved about this book. It’s a very easy read. It offers an alternate view of pest plants and animals (maybe they aren’t pests after all). A refreshing and important voice in the ongoing environmental debate of how we treat our forests and wild spaces.

Five: Rats

I hate rats. I know most people don’t like them but I hate them. They terrify me. I have nightmares about them. It’s the only animal I’m scared of in New Zealand.

We have rats living under our house. We probably have them in lots of other places but it’s the ones under the house that have made themselves known to us. Here’s a photo of one of them, probably a female, who keeps running over to my pile of pea straw and stealing bits of it. Probably for a nest. Let’s call her Hester.

I called in the Pest Control people who hid poison in critical locations like up in the ceiling and under the house. That was 3 days ago and Hester is still running around the pea straw looking lively. I bought 3 traps from the hardware store yesterday (2 bait stations and one neck-breaking trap) and got my son and his friend to place them around Hester’s favourite places. I saw Hester this morning. She’s still alive!

It’s because I hate rats that I don’t compost in the traditional fashion. I envy those gardeners with their big compost piles who swear they’ve never had a problem with rats. The reason, they’re keen to tell you, is because of their superior composting skills. I have 3 Bokashi Buckets and a big worm farm. Both methods are more labour intensive than the traditional compost piles but they’re completely ‘rat-free’.

Six: The Cabbage Family

I remember my mother growing orange wallflowers in my childhood garden. That was back in the 70s and New Zealand was embracing the English cottage garden style, albeit with a 70s twist. I think I’m trying to recreate something of that long gone garden in my own garden. I do love wallflowers and the colour orange. I bought Cheiranthus ‘Tairei Sunset’ from Hokonui Alpines last year. It’s a small shaggy plant with the most incredible range of oranges and yellows. It needs to be planted where it can be easily peered at. It could be easily grown in containers or rock gardens. By contrast Erysimum ‘Lilac Joy’ is a big bushy shrub that needs to be heavily pruned in spring (at least that’s when I do it). It has that delicious ‘wallflower’ scent. It grows easily from cuttings.

I’m growing a couple of different wallflowers from seed: Erysium cheiri ‘Giant Pink’ and Erysium cheiri ‘Velvet Wine Wallflower Collection’. I’m using a big plastic box with a lid as a makeshift greenhouse and the seedlings have just sprouted. I bought the seeds from Owairaka Seeds who have an interesting selection of seeds, many of which, you can’t buy anywhere else.

I’ve ordered 2 wallflowers from Marshwood Gardens: Erysium ‘Constant Cheer’ - orange/red, and Erysium ‘Pat’s Purple’.

Wallflowers belong to the cabbage family, Brassicaceae, along with turnips and Brussels sprouts. There are a number of flowers which belong to this group: Alyssum, candytuft (Iberis umbellata) and Honesty, Lunaria annua. The feature that’s common amongst the cabbage family are its four petalled, cross-shaped flowers.

I have a white honesty ‘Sissinghurst White’ and a purple variety, which I’m hoping will self-seed with abandon like its white cousin. Just in case the purple honesty doesn’t self-sow, or it did and I accidentally weeded it, I collected its dry seed heads in late summer. I’ll sow these in spring.

Seven: Penstemons

This is a marvellous plant that keeps flowering well into autumn. It belongs to the foxglove family. It’s refined yet sturdy. They’re robust in my garden, putting up with gale-force winds and dry summers. Penstemons bring splashes of colour and much needed height to my flower border. I have 3 different coloured ones, a wine-red, a cherry-red and a white. You only ever need one plant of each colour because they take so easily from cuttings. Snap off some stems, put them in a jar of water for a week or so and pot them up once they grow roots.

Eight: Foliage

This is one of my favourite foliage plants Ajania pacifica. I’ve only had my plant for a year and it’s growing beautifully. It’s supposed to grow to a height and width of 60cm. Mine has spread beyond these dimensions. I planted it in a semi-shaded area but I hear it’s equally happy in full sun. For 3 seasons of the year it’s a foliage plant and then in autumn it flowers. First, small lime green buds appear. These open into mustard yellow flowers, which can be used as cut flowers.

Nine: Cosmos

The gardener Arthur Parkinson reckons that if he was only allowed one packet of seeds to grow he’d choose cosmos. I’d have to agree. I’ve grown it from seed two years running (in seed trays that I’ve transplanted and straight into the ground) and it’s been easy and fast growing. It self-seeds too. Cosmos comes in lots of different colours and the foliage is as beautiful as the flowers. I’ve grown pink, magenta and white varieties and this year I’m going to try ‘Double Click Cranberry’ ‘Chocolate’ and ‘Kaleidoscope’ (which is an orange mix). I bought these seeds from King’s Seeds.

I’ve just ordered 3 packets of cosmos seeds from Heirloom Plant Nursery. I like to support all the small nurseries and seed companies. They offer a great service and often have plants and seeds not stocked by the bigger companies. Besides, I’m thankful they’re out there making gardening so much more exciting.

Ten: The Shed

Here’s the garden shed that our friend Paul is building for us out of recycled materials. Since this photo was taken I’ve planted 3 yellow roses ( 2 Austin’s - ‘Windrush’ and ‘Happy Child’, and a climbing rose from 1963 called ‘Casino’) and a yellow abutilon in front of it.

Eleven: Autumn Colours

I’ll finish with some of the Autumn colours in my garden.

Monty’s Surprise apple tree, orange abutilon and sedum.

Hopefully by the time you’re reading my next blog, in 3 weeks, Hester the rat and her ratty relations will be dead. Hopefully I’ll have planted my bulbs, painted the fence and my new roses will have arrived.

This blog is dedicated to my son and my dog who’ve stood by me and supported me during the rat invasion. My husband would’ve had a dedication too if he hadn’t been off galavanting around Europe at the time.