regardless of what the stats say on the soil maps, Strawbs, I can definately say my soil is alkaline - not as much as yours but rhodies and azaleas are a distant memory from my northern childhood - our black silty fen soil is top class for cabbages, celery and onions and sugar beet. Anyhow, unfortunately, I am not much of a guide to soil ph and roses since this is an issue which rarely comes up - at least not as much as mildew, rust or blackspot. The only dodgy roses (chlorotic, needing regular sequestrene) I grow have had too close a brush with rugosas - and one of my only Austins, Wild Edric is definately a pale and pasty specimen....although Compte de Champagne comes awfully close and I couldn't say what its parentage is. Annoying, as the rugosas are generally happy with well drained, sandy soil (I am on calcareous grassland. Of course, I do not have the extremes of temperature that you have so I have been able to adopt a blase attitude to ph as it is practically impossible to actually kill a rose here. Nonetheless, not dying is emphatically not the same as thriving - there are roses which are doing considerably better than others. I did expect china roses would be a bit feeble but have surprised me with their general willingness to grow and bloom - Sophie's Perpetual, Mutabilis and Sanguinea have been stars. Even more surprising, the infamous bourbons do well for me too. I would have to say that the majority of my roses are species or close hybrids although I have a weakness for Harkness floribundas. I am incredibly fortunate in that Beales and Trevor White (2 out of 3 old rose growers in the UK) along with Harkness and Legrice are based in East Anglia with similar soil and climate conditions as myself....and fervently believe that this conflation of conditions has a whopping bearing on the subsequent health of the rose once it is planted in my garden so I think you are right, Strawbs, in pondering specific nursery circumstances before considering buying from them.

Oh great stuff here. Will try and answer. Firstly, soil - it is weirdly both peaty....and sandy. It was originally an open field as late as the 1940s till early 50s, growing sugar beet. A fatal accident occurred in a drainage ditch and the original owner was grief stricken, selling it off to a company called Crown Estates, who, looking for a low maintenance crop, planted hybrid poplars. By the 1970s, the market for matches had died away and the plantation was abandoned. A later owner had the land for several years but was roundly chastised after dumping masses of hardcore and digging out a huge artificial fishing lake. He was ordered to clear the mess (which he largely did) but then left the plot for another 8 years.....when it came to us. The land is on marshland which is vulnerable to tidal flooding (although old photos during high tides show the river inundations stopping at the woodland edge). The whole area was once dug out for peat beds and is now part of the Norfolk Broads - a huge system of man-made waterways. despite the peat, the underlying geology is chalk and consequently, is more alkaline than I would have imagined (compared to Thetford forest and the Brecklands which have thin, sandy and very acidic soil). However, Flora, while I am keen to preserve existing biodiversity, there is very little apart from at the margins of the woodland (including, to my joy and amazement, snowdrops). Moreover, it is not really woodland by any stretch but is actually a neglected plantation of a monocrop......which gives me a degree of freedom to plant naturalised, if not entirely native species. And, in all truth, this will be my sole garden and I know I will have neither the discipline nor the passion to maintain a purely natural pallette of planting....but this does not mean I intend to run amok. Our countryside reveals the terrible evidence of irresponsible plant and animal introductions, so while there will (I hope) be hellebores, english bluebells, cow parsley, foxgloves and cranesbills, there will be no place for plants which are highly bred, sterile, or of little utility for indigenous wildlife. I am simultaneously thrilled and terrified. The treeline starts 10metres in from the south facing boundary streams and accordingly, I have ordered white willowherb, various umbellifers, campanulas and foxgloves to make a start on what I hope will be a small hay-meadow. Unfortunately, apart from a very few tree species, there is not an abundance of local seed to collect (although I have knapweeds, scabious, silene, agrimony and meadow rue). There is a very good chance I will be able to have a stand-pipe for water as my farming neighbour grazes rare breed cattle on the marsh and has a farm next to us - with water and electricity. I can also pump water from the ditches and even the river (amazingly, I have private access to a small amount of river frontage). Mr.Camps has had to give up work so we have time, if not money. We are both around 50ish and hope that this woodland will become our life's work, for us and succeeding generations......so we are in no hurry to do much this first year except observe, plan and sow seeds. I do have my allotments (a handy stock area) where I have my main collection of perennials and (my main love) wild roses but they are likely to be sold during the next few years. When I leased them in 2002, they were guaranteed free of development until 2012.....which seemed like an impossibly long time in the future - but here we are - developers circling and our city council is both craven and corrupt. Without sounding overly dramatic, gardening is my life (apart from my beloved children and grandaughter, obviously) - the impetus to grow and nurture is profound and the desire for a patch of our own land surprised me by an almost visceral level of intensity. I certainly don't care for bricks and mortar to the same degree- I can face up to losing my home and living in a horsebox with equanimity, whereas a house without a space to grow is no home at all. I thank you all for your generous and thoughtful responses and good wishes.

Usually when the green thumb comment is thrown out there its followed by "I have a brown thumb". In my experience, it starts out with the green thumb comment and ends up with the brown thumb comment. I've talked to people who tried gardening "I bought a few plants one summer and they died and...." If these died or did badly the assumption is "I just have a brown thumb" and they throw in the towel. You can usually tell in 5 minutes if the person is actually interested in gardening. Usually not. Its the same thing with drawing. You need lots of practice and hard work perseverance to learn to do this --- and desire. Its a matter of time & effort in both cases. Same thing in playing a piano, a person needs to learn scales and years of practice. The assumption some people make seems to be that some lucky people, by way of cosmic justice vs cosmic injustice, just plunk stuff in the ground and somehow it just easily grows for them while for other people, this is not the case. If the finished results or the glamor are the only thing a person wants, they will usually be disappointed and often they give up. On the other hand, if its the occupation itself and the work they enjoy, the final results are just the finished byproduct of that effort and they will usually achieve success. This is true in any endeavor. Talent is not a magic thing, its just enhances certain people in the process and results, its still about hard work and time. There is no easy.

Hi Annette, I'm not sure if your seeds of C. latifolia are originally from me or not(I've distributed a lot in the past couple years!) but it is a very pretty plant with large purple-blue bells on strong stems. Please note Libby's(Gorgeous pics by the way!) plant is a C. lactiflora cultivar not C. latifolia. C. Latifolia blooms in late spring/early summer. As with all campanulas it likes good drainage. It also prefers part shade. I have mine in a full sun border, but the shrub next to it does give it some shade. If the soil gets too dry during the summer as in a full sun border, the plant may go dormant, and then reappear once the temps go down and rain resumes. C. trachelium looks like a thin version of C. latifolia if that makes sense, lol. When I had C. pyramidalis, it did grow quite large! Unforutnately, it didn't like to hold itself up even in my poor soil border. So you may need to stake yours once flower stalks begin to form. For some reason, I don't have a pic of my own. The pic on the link below is a nice one of what it will look like once full grown. Remy Here is a link that might be useful: Campanula Page