Glad you enjoyed watching.

I don't think my show will be as good as yours unless we start getting much warmer sunnier summers! But it will still give me a lot of pleasure!

Happy New Year Lin. My attitude is that if I find a rose that I really like, I want more of it. I did buy a large selection of bare roots last year in the hope of finding something I liked, and a lot of them have been passed on because they disappointed me. That's in part why I watch people's posts, to see if they have found something that I might enjoy having in my garden. Some gardeners are adventurous risk-takers, like you and Ken, but I like to play it safe and stick with the tried and tested. We're all different, aren't we? Just saw the unboxing of Ken's roses. Looking forward to your unboxing now. I bet you bought more roses than Ken!

Happy New Year to you Raj. I am getting excited already just seeing those tiny signs of growth on the new bare roots. It's a bit like having children in fast-forward mode, watching them turn into fully grown adults in just one year!

@@nikkonch can't agree more, Nik 😅

Hi Linda , and a Happy New Year to you. You must be hardy and full of energy to cope with 6 hours in the garden at this time of year. There were people skating on the iced-over flooded fields near us a few days ago! I am just so relieved to have got that new bed finally planted, and those first little signs of growth on the new bareroots in the greenhouse have got me smiling already. I think we really deserve some warmth and sunshine this year after the last couple of years, so fingers-crossed!

Thanks Ken. All four roses were in pots before, so I am keen to see if they do better in the ground. Elizabeth was disappointing for me last year, so I'm hoping she will flourish now, as she has for other people. Looking at the time of your comment, I think you need to get to bed earlier! I am looking forward to seeing what new roses you are planting this year - your choices always seem to be much more adventurous than mine. Have a great 2025 full of gorgeous roses!

The heaped compost on the trug was frozen today, but this week I hope to skim off the top and plant the daffs. The sheep sometimes disappear behind a distant dip in the field on the right. Be careful on those ladders Peter!

Wii do. Thanks Nik. Keep up the good work. P.

Torches are one of my obsessions. I get very excited looking at their candlepower or Lumens ratings and am always tempted to get a bigger and brighter torch. They're useful living here - no streetlights. I could never resist flashing my Energizer keyring torch and illuminating the beach in Broadstairs when I was walking along the clifftops back from the pub when I was of working age - amazingly strong beam from such a tiny torch! Never felt the need for a fire extinguisher - probably just as well, I'd always be tempted to spray something with it. Let's hope for a warm, sunny 2025.

Hi Obi (we must have similar mindsets - one of my other screen names is Daft Wader!). We've just come through a short cold spell - in fact we had the coldest day this winter where we are, and the electricity company decided to cut off our electricity for "routine maintenance" on precisely that day. Sometimes you feel that the whole world is against you. As for my "secret"? - Pure luck - all my carefully prepared and nurtured cuttings died last year - that rose in the greenhouse was the only success, and that was not planted with any care. That's why I decided to ignore all the rules and just stuck those stems in pots last month with no expectations. Einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr!

@ 👍😂Dankeschön, now that’s terrible, hope you have a wood burner , I tried very hard many times, in spring in fall, in Sand in ..whatever, no success 🙂‍↕️my Mom actually did the same in her times, simply taking a cut stem and pushing it nest to the old Rose in clay soil…and it always worked..I hope all your beauty’s will survive…

Yes, it is early to prune, but as long as we don't get an abnormally long and cold winter it should be fine (fingers crossed). We rarely get below -6 degrees C here, and not for very long either, and more often up to plus 6 - 12 C in the winter. The fact that new growth is visible on the outdoor stems reassures me - and I just think in my simplistic way that the earlier growth starts, the more growth you get by flowering time. It seems a waste to me to cut back a couple of months' worth of new healthy winter growth by leaving pruning until February or later. We really do 2 prunings - a fairly drastic early winter cut as you see (especially recommended if you have tall bushes and get strong winds risking rocking the roots) and a second lighter early spring cut to better shape the bush and cut out weak stems and crossed stems. You can see from Gav's comment on this page that he also prunes about now in North Wales.

Thanks for the good advice, I'll get going this week, it 'promises' to be dry here in Cornwall ....

@@nikkonch I normally go for it on 1st Jan! but late this year due to snow and ice etc. Today was 5 but 10 expected tomorrow. Mulch next job!

Hi Gav. Early days yet for the cuttings - I've been disappointed before after a promising start. Pruning 30 roses in one day is very good going. Keep those secateurs sharp!

Thank you. Knowing that others get pleasure from seeing this is an extra Christmas present for me! I wish you and yours a Happy Christmas and hope 2025 brings you joy - and smiles!

Thank you - and a Happy Christmas to you!

Thanks Linda. Not too bad a day here - but maybe I'm influenced by my Welsh mother's ideas on weather. I took my wife, then girlfriend, to stay with her, and my wife and I went out for a day and it drizzled non-stop. When we got home, dripping, my mother said "Well at least you had a nice day for it." We seem to be getting the strong winds tomorrow, so I've tried to make the garden wind-secure (again) today. I think my wife has had stern words with Santa and the only roses I'll get will be of the edible chocolate variety. I did try and have a word with him myself at the local garden centre, but he just told me I was too heavy to sit on his knees. Have a lovely warm Christmas.

@@nikkonch haha well done, never stop trying Nik although I know you have a wonderful collection of roses already, there's always room for more ! Yes your Mum sounds like she was made of strong stuff. Trees blocking roads kind of day here but we managed to avoid the worse of it. The strong winds seem to be settling down now, take care tomorrow if these winds visit you.

And a Merry Christmas to you and yours Peter!

Thanks Nik. No pheasants here, just a ‘Yonder peasant…….’ wandering around the garden looking to see what needs doing. Cheers! P

Garden looking very bare Gav! Just one bedraggled Evelyn Fison rose on the decking (it's lasted about a month despite the wind, rain and snow!). My unknown rose twig casually stuck in a pot months and months ago has flowered in the greenhouse - still can't identify it beyond it being orange/pink, but the pink may be due to the cold weather - will have to wait until it produces more flowers in the summer. Hoping it's a DA rose, Lady of Shalott or Judi Dench. Enjoy your Christmas Gav - but get those secateurs sharpened for the big cutting back!

With their birdbrains it's surprising they survive anywhere - they will stand at the roadside here and then as you drive along they will try to "avoid" you by running in front of your car. It's strange how the males and females tend to stay together in their same-sex groups, so we will see 3-4 females in the garden and then later on a group of males like this, but very rarely a mixed group. Apparently in the next village there is a field where a friend of ours has seen hundreds together. I know a lot are bred for shooting, but many escape the shooting area and settle elsewhere in the countryside.

@ 😂😂😂👍nope I haven’t had one in front of the car, here they don’t get bred, they are under protection, they simply don’t have enough natural recourse’s and hiding space left because of intensive Farming, pesticides etc…the Birdlife in Britain is much richer in diversity and numbers …still, have a merry Christmas…

Thank you for your kind comments. Thank you too for making me revisit this video and reminding myself how good my garden looked almost exactly 6 months ago! We had an unusually early thin covering of snow a few weeks ago, but as normally happens here, it was gone in a few days, but that marked the end of the rose season. Now most of my bushes have been cut back and I have only about a dozen rose flowers dotted around the garden. But I only have 6 months to wait for my garden to return to the state it was in in this video! You may be right about the QoD being mislabelled, I don't know, but she is leaving my garden anyway, along with quite a few others. I am being ruthless with bushes that don't appeal or don't perform well - I need the space for those that do. So half-a-dozen are going and the same number of new ones are coming in - mainly David Austin varieties but another Sweet Honey too, because that is just covered in flowers for so much of the season. Now we both just have to wait patiently until the weather warms up to enjoy our gardens again. Thanks for dropping by!

Glad you liked it - there are two bushes there and this year I am adding a third. It really is an amazing rose - really healthy, vigorous, and flowers prolifically as you can see.

@@nikkonch Great idea! 💗You simply can't have too much of this beauty! I love to plant my favorite roses in groups too.😊

I wish you much success and enjoyment with your roses.

We are just beginning to feel the wind rise for 36-48 hours of 40-50 mph winds coming from the US/Atlantic, so there won't be much left in a couple of days. Our main rose season is from May/June until October/November - which months do your roses perform?

@nikkonch ours perform from late October till April.

@nikkonch some roses still have blooms in May.

I don't think Sweet Honey is the most beautiful rose but it is very strong-growing and in the UK flowers fairly consistently from May to November. It grows like a rocket - I think my bare roots reached 6 feet tall in their first year! The Lady of Shalott is a very bushy rose with lots of foliage - she has flowered very well for me, with what I think are beautiful blooms, and as you saw is about 5-6 feet tall too.

I am 90% certain that is a Harkness climbing rose "Scent from heaven" - I've moved things around a lot over the past few weeks, but looking at the foliage still on my roses, that seems to be the one in the video.

You're probably right about their future growth, but it does show the unpredictable "pig in a poke" nature of buying bareroots. I thought my DA bareroots were a little unimpressive this year compared with previous years, but you can't know unless you see a number of the same variety together. Fingers crossed it'll all turn out well in the end.

@@nikkonch That's so true with bare root roses. So far this year DA have been very good. Emily arrived with 6 canes & Eustacia had 5, both had great roots not always my experience with DA though. I have (don't tell my husband!) 9 due soon from the Netherlands and they could be a mixed bag re canes/roots as not varieties I've grown before but that's half the enjoyment isn't it with bare root season.

Because one is robust and the other a bit stringy I'd like to do a straight comparison between those two bareroots by planting them together, but they are going to different places. I'll put the stronger looking one in the more challengng spot. Pheasants, as you know Peter, are very cowardly, so the absence of pheasants once I am in the garden is only to be expected and not a sign of birdicide on my part.

Actually, it was only when I saw that torn-up patch of lawn on the video that I did in fact think that bed could usefully be made wider ... As you say, the work has already been started for me. P.S. I would never call my wife "my love" because I know that it will be like when I bought her a bouquet of flowers coming home from work, and she just looked at me and said "Alright, what have you done?"

A tenner for one or £18 for two these days - still a bargain compared with most other sellers.

Hi again Peter, thanks for your kind offer of work, but I couldn't possibly deprive you of the pleasure. I'm hoping Santa will bring me a bit more garden - and the energy and muscles to make use of it.

Hi Jay Jay! The bareroots are planted in "Durstons Multi-Purpose Compost with added John Innes", which is what I have been buying from the local garden centre for the past few years and have found to produce good results for me. So you are half right! Yes, the weak stems could maybe do with being removed. I'm planning to plant some of my 2/3 year old potted DA roses in that new bed, so I will probably only get 4 in there - 5 at a push. At the moment I am thinking two of my best flowering roses: Princess Anne and Lady of Shalott (my own cutting from a couple of years ago) ... then it gets tricky - Eustacia Vye? Emily Bronte? Elizabeth? Silas Marner? As you may have noticed I've big-potted my new (DA potted) Bring Me Sunshine and put it by the patio door. The new bareroots are staying in their pots for a year to get established, and then I have to see if I can squeeze one or more of them into a bed somewhere. So many decisions to be made. Who knew rose growing could be so stressful?

@ hi nik. My princess Ann hasn’t done so well for me over the two summers I’ve had mine. Planted in the ground in a good sunny position growth nor flowering has been that good for me as yet. But of course I see it elsewhere doing very well indeed. Some great roses you have there Eustacia Vye is rock solid choice always does well. One of the few roses I think worthy of all 3 recommendations. In my garden at least Elizabeth is the hardest worker she repeats so well. And growth is strong. Eustacia vye I think can be kept on the smaller side but I have one that keeps wanting to exceed 5ft no matter what I do. Best of luck all great roses.

@@Jay_Jay It's weird how unpredictable roses can be. My Princess Anne still had a load of flowers a week or so ago and yours has been disappointing. Your Elizabeth has been churning them out and mine seems to be on a permanent go-slow. But even my Ancient Mariner in the front garden has been a really poor performer (in fairly constant sun) while the ones in the back garden have been very productive. I remember Gardener Ben asking people about their Bathshebas because his had hardly given him any flowers over a couple of years, while most people find it a fairly free-flowering rose. You wonder if some individual rose bushes are just like the proverbial "Friday afternoon car" and you would do better to buy a new one, or if it's just where they are planted or the soil they are planted in.

Hi Nik. Your roses are still in good nik 😉( pun intended), especially your Lady of Shallot. What a huge healthy bush. Looking forward to seeing that bare soil transformation in the summer. That’s looks like prime spot for the lucky roses!

Yes Wendy, the pheasants are what really make me feel I live in the country. Most of my flowers have gone now too - Cosmos, Zinnias, Dahlias, Marigolds, all gone - time to get some packets of seeds in for next year. Let's hope for a short, mild winter - it's about time we saw some of the benefits of global warming, I'm fed up with the negative effects!

We now have somewhere between 7-10 pheasants spending large chunks of their day in our garden - over the past month I've started throwing a lot of birdfood around and that's brought them in (along with the *** pigeons!) - they are surprisingly effective, perhaps too efffective, as lawnmowers, tending to create bare patches as they peck the ground for seeds. Our ground is sodden at the moment - my sister-in-law's village a few miles away had a small river flowing through the main street last week, but fortunately she, like us, is on slightly higher land. Our Blush Noisette looks about to flower too. I expected our Sweet Honey to cope better with the weather, but she may still come back. The Lady Of Shalott is doing brilliantly well - with some mild, dryish weather she could still put on a really good show. I suppose we can't complain can we? - Still having any roses this late in the year is a bonus. The 4 new bareroots will, I think, stay in their pots for the next 12 months to give them a chance to grow good roots before they go in the garden - if they do go there. We have a lot of bulbs to plant too, but maybe we'll wait for a spell of dry weather. Good luck with your winter perparations Linda - although your last comment suggested you had everything well in hand already!

Hi Gav! I'm still hoping for a late burst of flowers before cutting back, but I think most of the roses have decided that the year has ended for them. Only 4-5 months before it all starts again!

Thank you, but I don't think there is any great secret. I throw a handful of Toprose granular feed around the base of each rose at the beginning of the season and another handful in the summer after the first flush. This year I have sprayed the roses twice with Roseclear to stop blackspot etc. I do water copiously - more than most people. I have been lucky and chosen some varieties which flower profusely and are more disease resistant than other varieties - I tend to dispose of the rose varieties which do not flower well and are prone to disease. Choosing the rose variety is important, but the same rose may flourish in one part of the garden and not in another part, so a position in adequate sun is also required. Luck plays a part - I think my clay soil benefits the roses (and I have dug a lot of multi-purpose compost into the soil over the years to improve it). The weather this year has been very good for the roses, and of course that is beyond our control! I wish you good luck with your roses next year!

Indeed you mention it there, I maybe wrong but I think if that snow freezes over into ice, the weight somehow increases or maybe just the chance of snaps increases

You were right Jay Jay. We weren't expecting any more snow overnight after a good thaw yesterday, but we got it, and below freezing temps too, so a lot of ice. The Lady of Shalott's thin stems which were horizontal yesterday surprised me by springing back up again, and the flowers still look good, but a VERY thick flower-topped stem on a Sweet Honey which was vertical yesterday seems to have broken somewhere down below - but there are other good stems on that, so I am not distraught. I received an Olivia today, the last of my DA bareroots - I don't know if it's my imagination but the stems on all of them seem OK but less substantial than in previous years - is it my imagination, bad luck, different varieties, or has the poor weather this summer held them back?

No, it's probably two or three months early for snow, but it doesn't usually last that long in Herefordshire, which is not that far north, a few days to a week is average. The north suffers more, but I remember living in London when there was snow on the ground from late December 1962 until early March 1963, but that was really exceptional. Quite often we don't get any snow in the winter this far south.

Yes, we can look forward to seeing them in their full beauty next year!

Yes, Wendy. Lovely to look at, but I was worried because I had to drive to a nearby village for a dental appointment this afternoon - fortunately the snow was not lying on the roads and there was no ice. It is early, isn't it? But maybe it's just a one-off and we'll have a heat wave soon!

Thank you.

Yes, I think I prefer snow to strong winds, but I don't think this snow will lie for long. I am still hoping some of my roses will hang around.

We were reassured yesterday that it wouldn't snow here. I don't know why I pay any attention to the forecasts. Having agonised for days earlier this month before I finally opted for a Penelope Lively bareroot rather than an Olivia Rose Austin, I was sent a DA voucher for my birthday, so Olivia is winging her way to me now too, Result! Not ideal weather for planting bareroots in the ground but I think I'll pamper Olivia in a pot in the unheated greenhouse until the spring, but I have got one or two more non-DA bareroots coming which will need to go in the ground. I am giving away some of my roses that have disappointed me, so the garden won't be too crowded - hopefully the roses that remain will get the message and up their game to keep a place on my "team"!

@@nikkonch Hi Nik, Penelope and Olivia are really lovely. Happy Birthday ! for whenever the big day is :) Roses🌹always the best gift. The snow will probably be gone in a few days so as long as your ground is not frozen solid you're fine planting bare roots just as long as you are ok to do some digging but do get wrapped up it's so chilly at the moment. Olivia will be fine in a pot. I've been really impressed with her in the first year she just kept flowering. I've got Emily and Eustacia to plant they've just arrived, they are in a bucket of water in the garage until I can plant them tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing what you plant and what you decide is going, bare root season is exciting but we need the weather to be kind to us !!!

You're not supposed to see Santa, Peter! He comes when you should be asleep!

@@nikkonch Oh dear, memory must be going as well as eyesight. Thanks, P.

We are in Herefordshire which is generally milder than areas north of us and not seen as a particularly cold part of the country (although it is a wet area). We probably have snow every couple of years, but usually two or three months later than this. So this was a surprise. It's already starting to melt.