This is just petal porn

Let’s just get it out there. My roses are amazing. And I can’t believe I’m shoving yet more colour at you in the form of flowers.

I feel we all need to sit quietly in a field of dirt and just embrace brown for a bit. Every post this month is a festival of ridiculous colour wheel glory.

But no.

I moved these planters from the courtyard when we repointed the house.

They started in pots; had a few years of sneaking their deepest roots into the gravel soil. Then they languished once I pruned their roots to get them out of the way of the builders.

Here is Etienne wondering whether gardening really was in his job description.

They went back for a season. And did not thrive. You can see here. They were ‘fine’. But actually I think I just had more fun painting the planters Downpipe grey.

They had to rely on me to get nourishment and water and in our hot climate it just felt cruel.

The roots needed to get into proper soil rather than be confined.

But I was plagued by mole rats munching the roots of most things in my potager for years.

So I was nervous. It might seem strange but I decided that instead of dismantling the wooden planters and doing the normal thing of planting bare root roses. I just planted the whole thing. Box and all.

And let the roots find their way into the soil as the wood rotted down.

It meant that the roses had a quieter year while they ‘settled in’. But it was a natural move after the distress of seeing mole rats causing so much havoc. I still haven’t dared to sow carrots, parsnips or any other root vegetable in the lower potager for fear of encouraging the beasts.

They didn’t. So after a year of things being fine…

This is my potager delight – roses really blooming.

I still have three of the roses in their planters int eh courtyard. No one has volunteered to ‘help’ me lift these incredibly heavy monsters. And I think the potager has enough roses

Yes, there is such a thing. I do need to save room for the vegetables in among the flowers.

But in terms of crop harvesting…