SdlM is gorgeous, I should try growing it again. Classy indoors and outdoors.

Ingrid, I love your Romantic garden! It is so lovely you have no idea. To me it feels like a trip to Italy or Greece or somewhere exotic and lovely. I thank you for posting these and hope for more in the near future.

Your garden photos are always beautiful, Ingrid, and I love seeing them!

Just beautiful!

Love your little piece of heaven!!!

Gorgeous ...I only wish I had a rose as yours, very inspiring

Nice your SdlM makes me want to add one to my garden. Lovely garden Ingrid. We got a few inches of rain today but it was short lived..

Your Potter and Moore looks rather nice and of course the sea lavenders are always lovely!

Commiserations regarding the mildew- its just starting up again here, courtesy of the autumn cool down. Strangely enough, the weather is similar- overcast and cloudy, but no rain at all for the last couple of weeks.

Lovely. Just keep posting photos, Ingrid.

Daisy

I'd already made a mental note to get a new SDLM and after having seen your wonderful plant I'm so glad the Oslo nursery I'll visit in April carries it. I grew it years ago in too deep shade but I'll be more careful with the next one.

I know this has come up concerning your garden before, or so I believe, but are you steadily adding organic matter to your beds? In large quantities? Incredible quantities? With soil about the exact opposite of yours, I find it amazing how much amending I need to do; and I think you do, too. Of course you have very different conditions of climate and water, but at worst plenty of amendment can't hurt (beyond your back and your pocketbook, I mean), and it might help even in drought and blazing heat.

Nice pics, as always.

Ingrid, I never get tired of looking at your serene garden pics. Love your SdlM. How large would you say it is? My young one is in the pot but it's getting along quite nicely (if I turn a blind eye to the bits of mildew here and there).

As always, lovely well designed garden beds and integrated roses among other plants. I don't know if the photos are so effective because of the garden or the photographer, but either way we welcome your sharing your beauty with us.
Cynthia

Thanks so much, all of you, for your words of appreciation. I need the validation of praise from less critical eyes than mine. Most of you probably know the feeling of thinking that everyone else's garden is nicer, more well-kept and more perfect than yours.

Marianne, I hope you get your SdlM this spring. Your climate is very different, but this rose is worth at least a try. bossyvossy and haku, I hope you too give it a try. haku, you have no idea what I would give for the "few inches of rain" you mention so casually. You simply cannot imagine. Nik, I just measured SdlM, although I did trim it back somewhat a few days ago, which I do often so it doesn't crowd the other roses and I have a little path to walk among them. Right now it's about 5.25 feet wide and just over 3 feet tall. I have no doubt that in a rainier climate, or even here if we had rain, it would grow much taller.

Melissa, your comment prompted me to rake up a wheelbarrow full of leaves and distribute them around some of the roses. I watered first and then watered again afterwards to keep the leaves in place. Mulching is a two-edged sword when you have almost no rain. I can't tell you how many times I've looked under the moist mulch of a rose that looked bad only to find that it was bone dry underneath. You need enough rain each time to penetrate both the mulch and the soil in order for the mulching idea to work, and we've rarely had that in the past five years, and this winter is one of the driest of all. The other problem is that, after what I did above, which took less than 15 minutes, I could not stand up straight and barely had the strength to walk back into the house. I'm saying this only to explain, because the last thing I want is pity. The "incredible quantities of amendment" are just so far beyond anything I can manage, and I can do less with every year. My husband would of course help if I asked him, but I only ask for the most necessary things because he doesn't enjoy the process. We have done it together in the past but the results didn't last very long, and as you know it's something you need to do over and over again in poor soil. I never expect anyone with a normal amount of energy to know what this is like, because it just isn't possible. What I am doing is limiting the areas that I have to garden. Just today Sophy's Rose was taken out after three years of non-performance. I still remember with wonder the huge flowers it had before the drought, but I know that will never happen again. The garden has to change, just as I'm changing and the weather along with me.

Ingrid, I think your drip irrigation will help so much over time. I think some of us might need to hire a bit of help for the heavy jobs. I tried to spread 3 cu ft blocks of compost and that about killed me. I should stick with 1.5 cu ft at the most. My husband is a huge help but I agree let's not drive them off. I really prefer doing things myself but that is not always possible.

Yes, I was going to propose occasionally hiring someone with energy and a strong back. I myself have a helper who comes a few hours a week, and very helpful she is.

Perhaps I don't get truly dry conditions, but I find it hard to believe that heavy mulching with organic matter won't, in the long run, benefit your garden. Of course this is ignorance speaking here. Cooler roots and more room for them to run, a thriving microlife would I would think benefit your plants. It would be helpful to hear from someone who gardens in similarly dry and intensely sunny conditions.

Don't get me wrong, every single rose is mulched here, and I've found that the best thing is to plant the rose deeper than the surrounding soil so that it sits in a basin and then to fill the basin full of mulch and of course also full of water to moisten the mulch. I water with a hose every once in a while even with the roses that are on drip since it also gives me a chance to hose down the roses to refresh them and remove aphids and other baddies. The drip system doesn't wet down the mulch, which is usually made up of leaves, although I also use bagged amendment at times. I definitely agree that keeping the ground cool helps alleviate the heat stress for roses. Sheila, I can't even imagine what you felt after you looked at your field of stubble, and in Alaska, of all places. I would have been a crazy woman. I hope the roses are thriving in your present location, and that you left your "helper" back in Alaska. I'm so looking forward to everyone's spring rose explosion pictures.

Ingrid, you are right. Thank God he's gone! It was devastating. I am not sure what was going through his mind but I felt brutalized. No "helpers" here except my husband who would never do that. It is hard to understand how ignorant some people are until they demonstrate it. My roses are so much happier here.

Ingrid your entire garden is so beautiful and I especially love your SDLM. Mine is only 3 y/o and not anywhere as lovely and big as yours. You are doing a wonderful job of keeping your garden going , we all have issues that keep us from having the perfect garden, right now BS has arrived in mine. Stay positive and keep posting pics, we all love to see them.

Ingrid, I sigh as ever at your SDLM. And I don't think I've mentioned before - your irises are beautiful - I have a few of the so called reblooming varieties and they resolutely refuse to rebloom for me.

Sheila, it's cold comfort I'm sure, particularly as they were roses NOT raspberries - but you do prune autumn raspberries to the ground every year, and whacking back won't really hurt summer fruiting raspberries either, so he was vaguely in the neighbourhood of being not entirely wrong, but for that pesky bit of nomenclature - rosa, not rubeus!

Generally speaking, you couldn't pay me to touch somebody else's garden - I think jobbing gardeners must be a brave lot, or merely sanguine about unpredictable bouts of employer's wrath.

I didn't know about autumn raspberries, but a whole season would be lost had they been summer raspberries only fruiting on one year old wood. I think a lot of the yard helpers are not real gardeners, or some of the mistakes we read about here would not have happened. It is so sad to hear about some of these disasters.

I'm always in the garden with my helper, and I give her simple tasks, which Lord knows there are enough of. We work together. She didn't know anything about gardening when she started, but I spend some time on explanation and she's a willing learner: she wants to do it right. She likes the plants and the garden and the work, and that makes a big difference. Lately she has been amending the earth from the holes we had dug last fall; a heavy job, and with my wrecked shoulder one I couldn't do. I did pruning and grass shearing then. She is very very helpful.

Beautiful buds and blooms, Ingrid. I love the color of Potter and Moore.

Melissa, You surely have figured out an effective way to have real garden help.

...I think you should have several more bushes of SdlM Ingrid, as it seems to grow so well for you, more so than for most, a quite superlative rose in your location.... I have often thought to ask why you don't grow a similar rose called 'Tipsy Imperial Concubine' as it's another that I think would enjoy your conditions.... it's habits are quite similar but with larger blooms....

...perhaps it's one of those you have already tried and rejected...as I know you've been through quite a few..... as I have...

I so enjoy for pictures, Ingrid. When my own garden is at its best, I seem to be so busy working in it that I do not stop to take pictures. You inspire me to pause and do just that!

I have three SdlM, and no place to shoehorn in another rose. I've only recently become aware of Tipsy Imperial Concubine as something special, and didn't realize what a beauty it is. If its blooms are larger than SdlM then it must really be something. The good spots in my garden are all taken, as well as some not so good ones, and I had to get rid of Souvenir de St. Anne's to accommodate William R. Smith, although the spot will turn out to be too small in the end. St. Anne's shrivels here with just a little bit of sun, which is a pity. I can't bear to plant any more teas in Tea Rose Row, especially since my last WRS bit the dust there.

nippstress, Krista, bpncrow, rosefolly, fduk, thanks so much for your wonderful words. Praise from my fellow rosarians here has real meaning for me. rosefolly, I love taking pictures, and my problem is rather that I tend to focus on the problems in my garden rather than enjoying the beauty that's also there. I'm working on that, though. Melissa, you've found a jewel of a helper and I'm really happy for you. The chances of finding someone like that here are very slim. Truth be told, loner that I am I prefer to have the garden all to myself except of course my DH.

Such beauty, Ingrid. Hopefully, since I finally got my SDLM in the ground, it will come closer to blooming like yours do, such a lovely rose! I love the natural beauty of your surroundings.

Thank you, Sara-Ann. I hope your SdlM will start to grow quickly now that it's where it will do best. Location has a lot to do with its success, I've found. Of my two new ones, one lags far behind the other. I can only surmise it's because it receives less sun, and perhaps also its proximity to a large butterfly bush, which may provide root competition. In any event, my oldest one took some years to attain its present size, but it's charming even when it's smaller, always providing some flowers for much of the year for me.

I so enjoy seeing your pictures of your beautiful garden Ingrid. Always a treat!