There was a gap in one of the rose borders so the obvious thing was to order some new roses. I knew they must be scented and preferably disease free so, back in the autumn, I started looking on-line at various rose growers so that I could order some new ones. Sounds simple doesn’t it?

The first problem that caused a delay is that I’m rather mean so the prices of the two major rose growers put me off. I had a re-think and looked at some of the less well known nurseries but they didn’t have the range available neither were they good on information about how likely their roses were to be disease free. Three or four times during the next few weeks I almost bought some. I looked long and hard at different websites and got thoroughly confused. Sometimes the rose listed looked perfect…..scented, disease free, right size, right colour, repeat flowering, (I was quite specific about what I was looking for) then it went and said that it was ‘out of stock’, Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

After a while of thinking of other things I suddenly realised that winter is galloping on so if I wanted to get some bare-root plants I’d better get a move on. Last weekend I went back to the David Austin site and ordered the following; Rosa Eglantine, Felicia and Gertrude Jeykell and looked the other way when the price (incl. post and packing came up). Still, its only an eighth of my monthly pension, what better thing to spend it on?

They arrived on Wednesday and were planted almost immediately (with the help of Mr Robin). I haven’t watered them like the accompanying instructions say which is just as well because it rained yesterday (a bit) and the ground is rather saturated anyway as it always is at this time of year. Hopefully they will grow happily and prolifically and give out much delicious scent in the summer.