A couple of years ago I decided I was NOT going to let my shady piece of property dictate how I wanted to garden. Under the guise of it being safer in case of a brush fire (which we actually did have come within 1/2 a mile of our house after we first moved in) I had the trees around the deck cut down.
My real motive was to be able to eke out a little bit of sunlight for a rose bed. And when I say little I mean I have room for about seven rose plants. The rest of the place is done up in azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons. I always wanted to keep a garden journal. My idea was to document the roses I planted, when they were planted, how they behaved and have a picture or two. Of course in my ideal world I would render amazingly lifelike colored pencil drawings of them but in reality I take the occasional snapshot.
I created a template for each rose and bought a sweet, little scrap book. I slipped a little posy under the protective plastic cover (which I leave on because it IS a garden journal after all. Could get dirty out there).
Of course I have only about a dozen roses, all told, in the garden – there is one along the fence that I absolutely forget about until Rick tells me it’s blooming and what do you know – there it is, bless its little neglected heart; and there are few more along the front of the house that I have a conflicted relationship with. They aren’t exactly the shade of pink I would pick but they bloom like mad so I tolerate them. Since I don’t have a lot of roses I have a lot of empty pages in my little rose diary.
Someday it will be bulging with pages and photos and jotted down notes on how a particular rose fares in a certain setting. I want to be able to snuggle up next to the fireplace on a cold winter night, flipping through the pages and dreaming about warm, rose scented Summer days.
The rose bed in the background of the first picture isn’t actually mine. It’s my Mother’s. If she had kept such a journal it would be rather brief since she only has two types of roses in her garden. Her very favorite ~ Iceberg and the incredibly scented climbing Sombreuil. In her memory I have an Iceberg in my own garden and if I had a place for a rose to climb I definitely would plant a Sombruil. It is undeniably the best smelling rose in the world, in my estimation. A single bloom will scent an entire room. Iceberg has to be the most prolific rose – in our Northern California climate it will bloom from April through December.
I can almost smell the roses now.
Oh it is lovely!! I need one for my own garden roses!! Ahren and I both could use soemthign like this…. Where do you suggest I look for one? How lovely to be able to flip through the years on on winter night to remember the roses of yesterday. Nan would have loved this.
I’ve always wanted to start a garden journal. I love the template you made. I noticed you bought the rose pictured at Regan Nursery. I’ve heard that’s a great place, I need to check it out sometime. I have about 5 roses in my garden and my favorite is a Nancy Reagan Rose. The leaves are lush and the rose is a beautiful peachy salmon color. It’s the only rose in my garden that is really healthy looking.
What a pretty garden journal. Ages ago, I used to keep one, and it was such fun to look back and see which week in March we were able to get the tomatoes planted, or what color grouping of various annuals I decided on that year. I didn’t have any photographs in my book, but that would make the record even more interesting.