Roses, Resilience & Gardening in Summer

We're in mid January, the midst of Summer in Australia, where the heat is intense with 43 degrees Celsius and climbing here in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales. We grow tough, resilient roses that love the heat, like the old heirloom Tea roses (not to be confused with Hybrid Teas), China roses, and some of the Noisettes.

Tea rose, Comtesse de la Barthe, often known as Countess Bertha in Australia, thrives in warm climates.

You won't read much about the heirloom Tea and China roses, let alone the Noisettes, in old rose gardening books written for the Northern Hemisphere. But here in Australia, in the Southern Hemisphere, roses like the Teas and Chinas that would be considered 'tender' in Northern America, Europe and the United Kingdom, are happiest 'down under' in warmer climates.

Some of the old Teas and Chinas even flower for almost twelve months of the year in some areas of Australia, like South East Queensland. Despite this, in extreme temperatures along with drought, we still need to be aware of their needs during these times.

Considered tender in the Northern Hemisphere, Tea rose, Safrano, flowered almost all year round in my old S.E.Qld garden

With good access to water during the hottest periods of Summer, the Teas, Chinas, Noisettes and even some of the Bourbons will continue to bloom in flushes throughout Summer, although the individual blooms may be smaller and less abundant at the peak of the heat. But it's not just the climate that dictates how well these old roses bloom during Summer.

Micro-climates play a role, such as boundary hedges and trees that filter hot winds, whether you're in a rain cloud where rain falls either side of you, in a frost pocket and so on. These factors all contribute to stress for the garden, but resilience can be increased by ensuring access to reliable water supplies. This is where storage in tanks (and dams), and if you're fortunate, town water, although that can be very expensive.

There is one major factor that is trickier to mitigate in the short term and that is soil health. We were on heavy clay in our South East Queensland garden which responded well to regular mulching with locally cut sugar cane and occasional doses of the neighbour's cow manure.

Tea rose, Mrs B R Cant, blooming well after good rain.

Here in our Hunter Valley garden, our very sandy soil means that any rainfall is not held in the soil long enough for rose and tree roots to benefit for any length of time. And any soil nutrients are regularly washed away. So my current mission is to constantly mulch our rose beds with compost, manure and pea straw or sugar cane. This takes a long time to show any benefits, so the most sustainable and effective method is by creating no-dig garden beds before planting any of the old heirloom and heritage roses.

I've been using the no-dig method of making garden beds for decades. It's a much faster way of providing good nutrition and mitigating any poor soil. There are lots of tutorials available online on how to do this, so I won't go into detail here. Just one point to make though, creating no-dig beds for roses requires much deeper layers of compost to plant into than for small seedlings.

Once the beds are created, matured for several weeks then planted into, the compost and various layers of mulch will deplete over time. The layers need to be regularly topped up with good, rich compost and mulch so that the rose roots are well covered and not exposed to the air. Eventually, the roots break through the layers into the soil below, which will ultimately be improved via increased worm activity.

China rose, Cramoisi Superieur loves the heat

This is an on-going process for us, but ultimately it builds resilience in the garden, with better water holding capacity of the soil through increased humus and improved microbial and worm activity. Throughout this hot Summer and into the cooler months of Autumn, we'll be constantly mulching our garden beds with compost, as well as increasing our water holding by adding more water tanks. While we're fortunate to be on town water for those extreme weather events, the cost of this is not sustainable for us. So we're building better garden resilience by adding more water tanks.

Meanwhile, the roses have put themselves into Summer dormancy, which is their way of coping with the extreme heat and poor water holding capacity of the soil. Summer dormancy just means that the roses stop blooming, even dropping some leaves, until the weather cools sufficiently, and/or we have good rainfall. No amount of hand-watering has quite the same effect as a few days of steady rain. Here's hoping ... (A side-note, shortly after writing this we had good rain of 27 mm. So thankful.)

Enjoy your Summer gardening but remember to stay hydrated yourself and out of the sun in the middle of the day.

Lillian xx