The weekend was perfect for working in the garden, fairly mild, hardly any wind and no rain. I’ve tended to give too many plants the benefit of the doubt when they are not performing well. Giving plants yet another year to ‘see if it does any better’ is really a waste of time. On that principle I decided to remove 2 roses which were looking decidedly  poorly. One was Rosa Jacqueline du Pre which has never done well, there’s always a lot of dead stems, and the flowers are not wonderful. The other one was a pink flowering shrub rose, but I’ve long forgotten the name. They may have been ropey looking roses but the root system was quite considerable and it took me some time to dig them out. Eventually the job was done along with removing all the many self-seeded Verbena bonariensis which were growing in the same area. I now have a large area to replant but haven’t yet decided what to put there. More roses maybe but choosing which ones to order is a daunting project. There is plenty of space so I won’t put new roses in the same places.

I also planted a few hostas on the edge of a border where it often gets water-logged in the winter. It will be interesting to see how well they do, but I will have to be pro-active in the spring to keep slugs and snails from shredding the leaves. We sold very few hostas this year (have they gone out of fashion?) so I could plant some decent sized pots full. I did first have to remove barrows full of yet more verbena before I could get the new plants dug in. The soil is damp and still warm and I haven’t had to worry about watering anything because we had half an inch of rain last night.

Time to have another look at roses online. They must have scent, repeat flowering and preferably be disease resistant, I’m sure I’ll find something…………Then there is the small problem of working out what to use for ground cover under the roses.