We had terrific rain yesterday and all the water butts are full again! I don’t often cut roses for the house but rescued a few Versigny and JC blooms from the onslaught:

My Lady Em is having a moment too. Peter. As part of my rose downsizing I have removed two out of four, leaving just one in the oranges and lemons border plus this potted one:

Just Joey again:

Other roses are slowly being replaced by tough shrubby things..

In a narrow edge of terrace bed, Abraham Darby and Honey Bouquet have now been replaced by three compact Nandina Domestica ’Gulfstream’ to eventually merge together and form a short hedge. Palais Biron and Yolande d’Aragón have made way for a gaura and a shrubby salvia respectively and another Loropetalum Black Pearl is waiting in the wings to replace Flamenco Rosita.

I’m on a weekly hunt for replacement shrubs as random stock trickles into the GC’s for autumn, hoping to find some more Teuicrium Fruiticans and maybe some Phlomis and Berberis Helmand’s Pillar. The last two used to be regular GC staples, but now I want them, they are frustratingly and inexplicably hard to find!

Excellent news, I managed to nab a Phlomis Fruticosa for my ’oranges and lemons’ bed, plus lots of other shrubby goodies on my latest GC foray, including several new (to me) varieties of nandina, such as Murasaki ’Flirt’ and ’Magical Lemon and Lime’. Plus more of Euphorbia ’Miners Merlot. The latter has become a favourite filler.

My aim is to gradually replace roses and perennials that are increasingly struggling in summer heat with these shrubbies and reduce the rose headcount to around 30. 40 is probably more realistic, there are some days my newfound ruthlessness simply deserts me. I mean, I have just rescued one dumped rose and potted up the two sad remaining canes. It was Palais Biron, what can I say?!

The East garden has taken far longer to recover it’s mojo after the brutal summer, so new foliage and buds forming now may not amount to anything much. These must be very close to the the last blooms from the West Garden..

Chippendale:

Lady of Shalott:

Lady Em again:

Versigny:

Kentucky, I've always been surprised that Delbard hasn't released Red Intuition into commerce the way they've released their other "Painter Series" striped roses, but at least it's available from a few specialty own-root nurseries. I also have Pink Intuition, which is impossible to find at any own-root nursery. I'm assuming that's because it is nearly impossible to root. I've tried for years, and I even sent a big bag of cuttings of it to one of my former trading partners (now retired) who was a titan of rose collection, and he had no luck either. I got my original from Steve at Wisconsin Roses in 2007. Trying to propagate Pink Intuition was one of the primary drivers of my desire to learn to bud roses :-D

I must be missing some posts? Kitty mentions something about Otterbon and a decorative concrete driveway… and I see nothing of the sort. Occasionally it happens that someone comments on a post that doesn’t show up for me.

I’m loving the deep colors that are showing up in my garden and are NOT crisping in the heat. It’s getting up into the 80’s every day but it’s so much better than the high 90’s. Here’s Prospero, Cardinal Hume and Munstead Wood and Yves Piaget from yesterday.

Here is today’s bounty:

Grande Amore

Lauren Leigh (big pink stripe)

Roberto Capucci

We are suppose to get rain Sat & Sun.