Trying to Tidy up the Garden

I will confess that growing attractive flowers and shrubs is not really my thing. I am much more into productive gardening. I enjoy looking at attractive flowers of course, but I am not particularly motivated to grow them. Personally I particularly like the blossom on my fruit trees, not only because it is attractive, but also because I know that I will be picking fruit from them later in the year.

At the front of our house, directly in front of the road we have a load of rose bushes. I have no idea what sort they are but the stems are very spiky, they have small attractive flowers (some are white and others are pink). When they have finished flowering they produce lots of red hips (which I always think I should try and do something with but never get around to it). Of course I am fully aware of the benefits of pruning roses, but I am not always very good at keeping on top these things. As result the rose bushes have really just got out of hand and become very unruly looking. As a result I decided that they needed radically cutting back, so out come the secateurs and gloves and I got on with some serious pruning. I have cut them back quite severely so it now looks like there has been a bit of a massacre, but at least we can see out across the fields again.

They will grow back of course, although I have done this far later in the year than I should have done so I don’t know if we will get any flowers this year. As a consequence we won’t have any rose hips either. I remember as a child being given rose hip syrup as it is high in vitamin C. I have also read that you can make them into a tea. Of course, generally tea and water are good for digestion, but I am not really sure what rose hip tea does for you. In any event, it looks like such experiments will have to wait to next year anyway!

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