I'm constantly amazed at how spectacularly beautifully all your roses (and other plants, like the crab-apple) seem to combine colour- and general appearance-wise. I believe I recall you saying you really don't put a lot of thought into it, and that it's all just a series of happy accidents. But I often see accidental combinations in other gardens that simply don't work as well as yours. I feel there must be some magical secret spells at work in your garden, that make everything not only grow so huge and healthy (possibly attributable in part at least to near perfect rose climate, along with so many decades of gardeners' loving cultivation) but also - 'accidentally' - consistently so harmonious in appearance. Do you or your forbears practice any type of witchcraft by any chance, Jackie? Nocturnal full moon ceremonies, buried rams horns, or sprinkling of specially blessed good karma-infused waters, perhaps...? Just curious... :-D

Such a pleasure to see the word "cavorting" in a post! And so appropriate! Thanks for sharing, Jackie!

Belle Portugaise and Fortune's Double Yellow are a lovely couple. I adore this combination!

lol@buried rams horns and witchcraft !☆●○

I dont have any rams horns but I may be able to get some smelly goat horns..I wonder if that would work for me. Iol

Hee, hee - no magic, I am afraid, except the long passage of time. I thought about it, and the one thing I came up with is that the plants in our garden are allowed to get mature, and mostly encouraged to grow how they want. Many times they only get to their most beautiful when they are at least 5 or 6 years in the ground, and sometimes much older. Also, if they start doing strange things (there are several rose bushes which have morphed into climbers over time, for example, even though they were not "supposed" to be climbers), we just let them be. I am always curious to see what they will do.

Our flowering crab apple tree is the largest I have seen around here, and I am told by my DH's family that it was planted in the 1940s or so. It just keeps getting bigger and better. We never do anything to it, except that we did remove a few of the lower branches at the order of our Fire Dept.

The climate, of course, allows that long term growth to happen, along with the good soil, and the fact that the property has been in the same family so long. This causes a sort of feeling that if one of my DH's ancestors planted something which is still healthy, I should leave it to thrive as long as it can. (When we first moved in here, there was a giant eugenia tree - 40-50 ft tall - dropping fruit maybe 10 months of the year, right on the front brick path which leads to our front door. Being a new homeowner, I convinced my DH that we should remove it. My FIL was alive at that time, and his reaction to my DH was " Your Grandmother LOVED that tree..." - end of plan to remove the tree.) Also, anything fussy or unhappy which needs constant care or spraying dies, which leaves only the happy plants.

I am not a garden planner, or designer of perfect spaces who removes and replaces every plant which does not comply with the original design. One funny example of that is the oval bed which my DH carefully cut out of our lawn, and put a brick edging around. It was the only space I actually ever tried to "plan" seriously. The plan was to have one tree rose, surrounded by tiny miniature rose bushes. Ha! One of the "miniatures" turned out to be no such thing, and immediately climbed over the top of the tree rose. It gets bigger and bigger every year, and I love it (the tree rose is still getting bigger and blooming happily alongside and sort of under it). Last year I noticed that one of the actual original miniature roses I planted around the bottom of the tree rose (which did stay maybe 18 inches tall for many years) has suddenly become a climber and leaped up to the top of the tree rose! Luckily it still has thin canes and tiny blooms, so it is just pretty, not overwhelming. The other thing which has happened in that oval is that of course the roses are fooling around, and producing hybrid volunteers, some of which are gorgeous! I suspect the partial shade has something to do with the urge to get tall, but who knows? I just enjoy the result.

Jackie

I love hearing about your garden, and seeing the pictures each year. It all goes to show what a fortunate climate and dedicated gardeners can accomplish, especially when given the passage of generations.