Garden Studios

Then I remember the Paul’s Himalayan musk rambling rose that covers one side of my garden with a froth of delicate pale pink flowers every June and that i re-evaluate.

November and December are a great time to plant roses so long as it’s not too cold, so one can get settled into the bottom when there’s a number of moisture to assist feed growing roots.

Good soil choked with nutrients can be essential, so that you should add compost for those who plant your rose and always ensure the collar – or ring across the trunk – of the rose just isn’t buried underground.

The attraction of climbers and ramblers is that you just don’t must give over valuable garden space to something that only looks good for a short while.

They might be tucked away in the back of the border, along fences and intertwined with hedges.

I prefer roses with dainty flowers that swarm across fences and hedges, into our trees and hardly look worse for wear after a storm, as larger flowers do.

The difference between rambling roses and climbers is that ramblers are more robust and only flower once a season – but quite spectacularly.

I can recommend Rambling Rector with its clusters of little white flowers with yellow centres.

We even have the climber Veilchenblau: it’s an unusual purple multiflora rose cultivar that fades to pink, with hundreds of tiny flowers crawling along the fence behind our pear tree.

The climber Rosa filipes ‘Kiftsgate’ has single, small white flowers that mingle with the pale pink Paul’s Himalayan Musk and on the bottom of the garden we’ve got the rambler Rosa mulliganii, which is analogous to Kiftsgate with long-lasting displays of bright red hips.

Another vigorous rambler is the Sir Cedric Morris rose, which we always think looks similar to miniature fried eggs and popping through Sir Cedric Morris are the tiny startling red flowers of the rambler Chevy Chase, and the glowing reddy-orange of the climber Warm Welcome.

We have found that having a mixture of climbers and ramblers means there are roses stoning up somewhere within the garden all summer and this year the fall hips was almost as attractive because the flowers.

They do take a little bit taking care of, though. We’ve a rambler within the front garden that has just climbed into among the many council’s trees on our street – so we have to prune it now before we get into trouble.

We also have to tie in other new shoots in order that they don’t cause any damage during windy weather and cut out any dead or misshapen shoots to create a great structure with quite a few air in order that mildew isn’t an issue next summer.

But we won’t be snipping off the ramblers’ hips – they may be for the birds and for cheering us up as we head into the gloomy December days.