I’ve enjoyed gardening for decades now. It helps me relax, connects me to the Earth, reminds me that I’m a physical being… not a bodiless brain floating around just thinking all the time, but an actual being in a world full of other beings, and we meet up and commune together in the garden.

The roses though… oh, I love them. Many years ago I moved into a home with a beautiful garden that was planted by a dear friend of mine and she was moving and wanted someone who would care for it. I tried. I learnt a lot but fear she’d have been disappointed if she had seen it a year or two later. I remember she had rows and rows of roses in pots on her back patio and she was mad about them. She also had planted some huge roses in the garden, “they’re tea roses, don’t treat them like hybrid teas”, and I didn’t have a clue what she meant. She took her potted roses with her but the garden was blessed by these huge old roses and they just bloomed and bloomed.

Flash forward several years to when it was time for me to start my first garden, I decided to try to find roses like the ones she had. I discovered that she had been growing a combination of “Old Roses” and modern roses by David Austin. These were strongly scented, bushy roses that were really different from the other roses one might find more commonly in most gardens. That was about 25 years ago now and I think in the several gardens since then I’ve probably grown nearly 200 hundred rose, mostly Old Roses and David Austin roses, and I love them all. For me, they must have a strong scent, old fashioned flower shapes, and be disease resistant as I’m an organic gardener.

Here are some recent posts of my garden, my roses, and sometimes other gardens and roses that I visit. I hope you enjoy the photos.