The Wild Borders: A walk amongst the roses

And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.

Hodgson Burnett – ‘The Secret Garden’

I recently wrote a post introducing The Wild Borders to you all, which you can read here: https://thecharmingnook.com/2024/04/15/introducing-the-wild-borders/

My last post showed you how the border looked throughout the seasons in 2023. I loved how magical this border looked last year – it remains one of my favourite parts of the garden for good reason:

At some point in time, I wonder that perhaps someone was able to get up to the roses; there were (overgrown) steps up to the border and the roses had certainly been trained onto the wall to some degree, but the trellis that was there was now brittle and rotten, and the wiring used to support the roses was too thin and weak, and there wasn’t enough of it.

I decided one day in September 2023, when the main border had gone past its best that it was time for me to take action. I had to get access up and tend to the roses!

Once I battled my way up the steps, here is what I was presented with – chaos!

So I spent a sunny afternoon chopping everything back to give myself a pathway through.

We had spare paving slabs that we had lifted from other areas of the garden, so the Mr laid these straight down on the areas I had chopped back; these gave us a temporary pathway.

At last, I was able to inspect all four of the climbing roses. To my surprise, the white rose in the far left corner had the most wonderful fragrance and it was beautiful. Looking back at the garden from that corner gave me the idea that I wanted to be able to sit there in the future, enjoying the scent of the white rose. Thus, my vision of creating a walkway to admire the roses and the wild planting was born – with a pretty seating area to wile away the hours.

In February-March 2024, we purchased two metal garden arches and a matching metal arbour seat and attached the arches to the walls at the points where the walls naturally jut out at their support columns. We settled on crafting our own brackets from metal bracing we found in our local hardware store and the arches were fixed firmly to the walls and into the ground. We have had multiple storms and extremely windy days since then and they have not budged – they are very sturdy!

I also battled with the roses, getting very scratched in the process (despite long sleeves!) and I removed the old rotten trellising. We spent a number of weekends over March 2024 drilling holes in the walls to fix sturdy eyelets and a strong wiring support for each tier of the climbing roses. These supports should last for years to come.

I gave each rose a generous prune and managed to train each of them into the shape I desired. Each rose has various tiers, with the canes trained near horizontal and the flowering spurs clipped to 2 or 3 buds to encourage flowering all the way along each cane.

One of the climbing roses was also already large enough for me to begin training it over the first arch way, which is how I imagine the area in the future – covered in roses! The archway shows the result of training the canes horizontally to encourage budding along its length:

I also moved the climbing rose that a good friend purchased for me for my birthday in 2023 – a climbing rose called James Galway. This is situated right at the front of the border, on the right side archway, where it can be freely admired. I will be training the canes around this in a diagonal criss-cross pattern, to create a rose pillar and (hopefully) a prolific flowering display:

We then installed the arbour seat, fixing that in the ground with a tall metal fencing stake in each corner. We also attached netting over the arbour and onto the back wall, to encourage a climber to scramble over the whole area.

We planted in Clematis Montana ‘Elizabeth’, which has already grown some way up the side of the arbour; it is a vigorous climber and will do a quick job in a year or two of covering all of that area!

We then finally removed the temporary paving slabs, I weeded the path and we laid down a thick layer of bark mulch. I love the final effect of the bark mulch – it is a much softer effect compared to the paving and is in-keeping with the ‘wildness’ of this border.

I have added in additional roses this year to the area, in the form of four rose standards – a mixture of pink and white – which I have dotted around the borders to create some vertical structure.

I also planted two magnolia standards, known as ‘Red Lucky’ on account of remembrance of an old pet called Red. This year one of the trees has already started opening one of its buds:

Since all of the above, I have spent many days having a look at the border and walking along the pathway to sit on the arbour and look at the planting close up. The arbour is situated in a shadier spot, so is comfortable for me to sit in for a long time even during hot weather.

I am so happy with how we have improved this border, whilst still allowing the self-seeding plants to set seed where they prefer. I think the walkway helps make sense of the area – the stairs giving clear access and a journey up there to the seat through the planting.

I intend now just to watch and wait, and see how the borders develop. It amazes me how quickly the planting in this area grows from having died back to the ground through the Winter.

I am hopeful that this year, I should be able to continue the floral display until the worst of the weather… Now we all just need some consistent sunshine!