Baytree Garden Centre’s top tips on planting roses

This week’s Baytree Garden Centre column helps you to pick the perfect spot for your rose...

This week the Cox household has played host to daughter number one’s four-year-old cousin Emma and her best friend Gordon. Sadly, whilst on holiday with us Gordon took very ill and passed away very suddenly.

Emma has insisted that the entire household dress in black for a period of no less than three days whilst arrangements are made to bury poor Gordon. Invitations have been sent out to close friends of Gordon to attend his remembrance ceremony. Emma keen to invite the King sent him a personal letter written in crayon.

On the day of the ceremony, the present Mrs Cox made sandwiches and light nibbles and, to cater for the King, Emma emptied a packet of Twiglets into a bowl as those are his favourites (so she said).

Emma felt that we should plant a rose in his honour next to the swings that he liked to play on. So after choosing to plant a Typhoo Tea Hybrid T rose I couldn’t help but be struck with just how beautiful a morning it was as we laid Gordon to rest in the garden.

I began digging the hole deep enough for the rose and Gordon, Emma’s imaginary friend, to be placed into!

This variety of rose is much like many others and will happily grow in most places in the garden as long as they get at least six hours of sunshine on average a day. Some varieties will tolerate less as roses on the whole are quite a hardy plant.

Fungus can really damage your roses so it is good practice to plant your roses in an area where there is a good movement of air, that way you reduce the chance of fungal disease taking hold because the air flowing in and around the plant will help to keep it fairly dry.

To prevent disease transfer, do not plant a rose where you have had a rose growing before. Luckily for me, as a family we had decided upon a perfect spot for our new rose. Roses really like rich, loamy, free draining soils in which to grow in.

With any rose that I plant a rose I always incorporate Mycorrhizal compound into the planting hole. This special fungal compound works with the rose and helps improve nutrient and moisture uptake through the root system, because of this the rose establishes quicker than if no compound is applied.

With a garden spade I dug a hole to a depth of 45cm (18in) deep and to a width of about 30cm (12in). The reason for the deep hole is that you want the graft union - that is the point in which the rose has been grafted to the rootstock – to be just above the level of the soil (this union will be obvious when you look at the rose).

Into the bottom of the hole add some well-rotted farm yard manure and tease the roots from the rootball before planting. Once the rose was in position it’s just a simple case of back filling the soil, firming into place and then giving the rose a good watering making sure that the water gets right down to the roots.

Emma said a few words as I backfilled the soil in Gordon’s honour. According to Emma he was particularly good at running and jumping. We waited for 10 minutes to see if the King was coming but since it looked like he was held up in traffic we headed back inside to catch the beginning of Mr Tumble on CBeebies whilst tucking in some some sausage rolls and cheesy puffs.