Climbing roses are a fantastic way to bring colour and charm to a bare wall, arch, fence or pergola. Climbing roses produce main canes and side shoots, the main canes are the backbone of a climbing rose, the side shoots produce the flowers.

The secret to successful climbing roses is to train and prune to encourage side shoots. Train the main canes of the rose horizontally, across rather than straight up. This may mean a ladder effect, ‘across and back’. It is best to tie or clip the canes to the support, rath er than weave, this makes it easier to prune back dead canes.

Those climbing roses whose names start with ‘Climbing’  are sports (genetic mutations of the bush varieties of the same name). They generally have a heavy spring bloom followed by scattered blooms throughout the season. The individual rose blooms on climbing roses can be of a finer quality and larger in size than those on standard rose bushes. Climbing rose bushes whose names are not prefaced with ‘Climbing’ are bred by crossing two rose bush varieties.

They generally have a heavy spring crop of rose blossoms followed by a repeat bloom and usually a good fall crop of rose blooms with a few exceptions. Climbing roses are a diverse group with many different heritages, which makes this a wonderfully useful collection of roses. Climbing roses have wonderful color in the rose garden without taking up much ground.  

Climbing roses vary in winter hardiness. Generally, the climbing rose varieties are hardy zones 5 or 6 through 10 except as noted, some with more or less hardiness as noted.

Size: The first step is to determine how much room the rose will have to climb or ramble. Do you want a monster vine that will climb 30 feet, up onto the roof? Or do you need a delicate, well-mannered rose to cover a six-foot arbor over the garden gate? Many people make the mistake of choosing a rose they happen to like even though it wants to grow 25 feet or more, thinking they can keep it cut back to fit a five-foot trellis. This simply will not work. The constant pruning needed to keep it under control will butcher the plant, prevent it from blooming, and exhaust the gardener.

Shade Tolerance: Once you’ve determined the ideal size for your rose, the next thing to consider is the amount of sunlight that will reach the site. Although most roses need full sun and heat to bloom and stay healthy, there are a few climbers that will thrive in partial shade. In general, though there are exceptions, the white, light pink, and light yellow roses can tolerate more shade, while the reds, oranges, and stronger colors need more sun.

Disease Resistance: Even if you like to spray your roses (which I don’t!), it can be very difficult to reach all the leaves on a climber that’s tall and massive, so starting out with a healthy variety can save you a great deal of trouble. It’s also important to choose disease resistant varieties if you’re planning to grow the rose along a wall (which greatly reduces air circulation), or if you’re planning to grow it in partial shade. Roses on a chain link fence or on top of a pergola in full sun will have fewer fungal problems than roses on a north wall, which will need to be chosen with great care.

Rebloom: Many climbing roses, particularly the old Ramblers, bloom only once in the spring, while others will continue to bloom spring through fall. If this rose is going to be the star attraction in a small garden, you probably want to choose one that will perform for more than a month or two. But if you have room, many of the once-bloomers are so beautiful they’re worth growing for their annual spring show.

Many climbing roses will repeat with much greater frequency if given adequate water, fertilizer, and sunlight.

Container Gardening

If you are growing plants in containers there are a few things that you will need to take care of if the plants are to survive. Obviously you will need to start with the best and healthiest seeds or plants.
Choose good quality container mix too, such as proprietary hanging basket mixes that  have been developed to provide the best growing conditions in these unique situations.

For aesthetics you will probably want to get the container looking as ‘full’ as possible so you will be cramming the plants in.  It is best to put the larger plants in the middle of the basket with smaller plants trailing out to the edges and the sides.

The larger the container,  the better chance your plants will have to survive and they will also require less maintenance.  As with all plants no matter where they are growing water will be essential and with containers more care is required than normal.

You can place a water trough between the plants and the liner to maintain a place to hold water that would normally seep through the liner. In warmer weather you will need to water the plants more often and this is best handled with a long watering wand, which makes reaching the plants easier.

Occasionally, where you have containers that are easily moved, you can soak the entire basket in a tub of water.  If the container has been quite dry you will need to soak it until the bubbles stop rising.

Always use quality liquid plant feed to ensure your plants are getting all the nutrients that they require. To prevent the plants from drying out in the sun and the wind aim to get maximum foliage coverage.

If you take the time to give your container plants the additional care that they need, you will be rewarded with a pleasant addition to any living area.

The joys and adventures of growing ferns are countless. Being perennial they return year after year. Many ferns thrive in dense shade where few other plants will live. Some are evergreen. Most are easy to grow, requiring literally no care and upkeep. Ferns multiply rapidly, remain lovely all summer, seldom are seriously bothered by insects or diseases. The appeal of a fern lies in the exquisite beauty of its form, texture, and its various shades of subtle foliage color. Incidentally where you have ferns you will also have birds: the furry down that covers the young fern fronds makes ideal nesting material.

If you have but three trees and a little shade, ferns will convert this to a real woods setting, small in scale perhaps, but genuine in feel and atmosphere. Whatever small wooded area they grace, ferns seem to enlarge it. They even bring the feel of woods where no woods exist at all, as when planted on the north side of a wall, in the lea of a building, or in any protected shady place.

What’s more, you can dig almost any fern you need from the wild; few species are on conservation lists. (Check first, just to be sure.) Ferns are fillers for bulb plantings in a shady or semi-shady area. They can be a fine and significant feature of your basic landscape design. Also they hold the soil in place along the banks of streams, ponds, lakes, or on any shady or sunny slope.

You can even eat ferns in their early growth; cut and cook them like asparagus, swimming in butter. Each year in the dead of winter I resolve to try this. But when spring arrives I never have the heart to disturb them with knife and cooking pot. Whether you eat them or look at them, ferns are well worth keeping track of in the spring. However, even if none of these delights and adventures existed, there is still this one reason why ferns are a must for somewhere in your outdoors: the utter and irresistible appeal of their new fronds uncurling out of last year’s dead crown.

There on the leafy woods floor you watch the golden-brown furry frond reach up and give itself to spring. In its very unfurling is a kind of yielding, a yielding to the new season.

To help you get to know the ferns, here’s a brief description of their “anatomy.” A fern frond consists of “leaves,” stem and all. A pinna (plural: pinnae) is a single “leaf” on this stem. A pinnule is one of the
divisions of this “leaf.” In other words, a pinnule is a small segment of the pinna which is part of the frond.

A sporophyll is a spore-bearing frond. The spores (fruit) are the little brown dots or “seeds” often noted on the undersides of the pinnae. A spore-bearing frond is called a sporophyll. The sporophyll may be similar to the sterile fronds or, as in the cinnamon fern and a number of others, quite differently designed.

Ferns increase and spread naturally by spores and underground runners. You can also propagate them by dividing the clumps. I recommend for your garden, woods, or brookside and in every sort of location in your garden.

If you, too, are converted to the idea of a meadow instead of a typical lawn, this is the way to go about it. First assess your site. If you have a twenty-five to fifty-foot stretch of fringe growth or wilderness area anywhere, you could let part of it go even wilder and enjoy there some of the meadow flowers. If you own a larger field, you are really set. You might even consider letting part of the actual lawn grow into meadow—it would mean lots less upkeep and a new kind of gardening for you.

Of principal importance: Don’t mow the area till late August. Observe the area from spring on and see what plants come up by themselves. This interval will also allow what comes up to go to seed. All through the first season note and mark areas where no flowers come and where you’d like some. Plan then to sow these areas the next spring.

In naturalizing meadow flowers your eventual goal is not a half dozen of anything but a hundred or, preferably, a thousand.  Only Nature can be this lavish in planting (to buy even fifty plants would be prohibitively expensive), so you start with a few plants which, once established, will reseed by themselves. You can transplant anything at any season if you follow these few suggestions.

If you go plant-hunting on public property, first check to be sure that what you are about to dig is not on the conservation list in your location. Fortunately most of the plants mentioned here are not. Usually anyone who has a field will gladly share his abundance with you. I asked the man in charge of our neighbouring reservoir if I could dig some white pentstemon from along the water’s edge. “Those weeds?” he called, then, “take all you want!”

Here’s a very important point: study the site where the plant you want is growing and then provide in your landscape an environment reasonably similar as to location, sun or shade, slope of land, moisture or dryness, rich or poor soil. However, some plants will thrive in various locations, and this invites you to experiment.

If you possibly can—by referring to advance weather reports (or simply by hunch)—plan to dig the plants just before a rainy spell. You’ll need a sharp spade, really sharp. If it is dull, have it sharpened, so you’ll be able to cut into dense field sod with ease. A sturdy fork may be advisable, too. When you lift the plants to take them home, take as much soil as you can with each one, disturbing the roots as little as possible.

If you are transplanting on a sunny day, wait until late afternoon or early evening to settle the newly dug clumps of plants in your meadow. If you can, soak the soil first, this softens the earth and facilitates digging. When you do dig planting holes —and this is really a matter of turning back a large hunk of meadow sod—loosen the soil a spade depth beneath, and then set the plant. Often two or three plants can be spaced out in the same hole. Even the holes should be close, a mere few inches between them. This way the new plants can grow thickly and present a solid front to encroaching grasses.

And now for the most vital point. Before you fill in with dirt and fold the sod down again, pour water in the hole. It is not enough to plant them all and then water the top of the ground. The water must be in the soil, under and all around the newly set roots. Then, water daily until new growth commences, or until the leaves feel stiff with renewed vitality. If, with luck, a three-day rain comes on the heels of your planting, you may not need to water for quite a while after the original soaking. Even if you plant in the rain you must soak the soil in the hole.

If a drought comes along during the next few weeks, water all the new plantings as needed.
It is most satisfying to collect plants in flower. Those we have successfully moved in midsummer and in midbloom

include bouncing bet, pentstemon, and bellflower. When you dig up mature plants, do not be concerned if the surrounding grass is tall and tangles with them. It is only with young seedlings that you need to bother about removing weeds and grasses from the soil clump.

Photo: Free Digital Photos

Japanese gardens are a living work of art in which the plants and trees are ever changing with the seasons. As they grow and mature they are constantly sculpted to maintain and enhance the overall experience. Hence a Japanese garden is never the same and never really finished.

While the underlying structure is determined by the architecture, that is the framework of enduring elements, such as buildings, veranda’s and terraces, paths, tsukiyama (artificial hills) and stone compositions, over time it is only as good as the careful maintenance that it receives by those skilled in the art of training and pruning.

As the Japanese garden evolved over 15 centuries it is difficult to label or “put in a box”. As there are many garden types in Japan, to typify it as (just) “a Japanese garden” is not enough. It is not workable nor does it do justice. The differences between e.g. a Tea-garden and Karesansui-garden are just too big to talk about in general terms when working to design one.

It is important to know what type of Japanese garden you are “planning” so you can name it and focus on the relevant characteristics. There are of course commonalities between all Japanese garden types but these are often not the subject of discussion. It is required to typify it one degree more precise to be able to successfully realize a Japanese garden, either of a single type or a composition of divers elements.

Since the Muromachi Period, the Japanese tea ceremony has flourished. Sen no Rikyu established the style of tea house, and they usually had a roji or “dewy path” leading to them.

In the beginning of Edo Period, when shoguns and daimyos built their castles and mansions, they created many excursion-style gardens, in which people could walk around the garden. One of the famous garden makers in this period is Enshu Kobori. The excursion-style gardens have a pond or an artificial hill at the centre, which are often seen in daimyo’s mansions, are called Chisen excursion-style gardens.

Japanese gardens might fall into one of these styles: Strolling gardens, for viewing from a path and sitting gardens, for contemplating from one place, such as the tiny tsuboniwa found in machiya (traditional wooden townhouses).

Typical Japanese gardens contain several of these elements, real or symbolic:

• Water
• An island
• A bridge to the island
• A lantern, typically of stone
• A teahouse or pavilion

Photo: James Phillips, Japanese Garden – Portland, Oregon.