Plant of the week - Rose 'Patricia'

I prefer rambling old-fashioned style roses as a rule, but this rose has a special meaning in our house.

The colours really are amazing as you can see from this photo. The blooms are intensely salmon-pink, almost red in the bud, and as they open they show an array of hues from lemon yellow, peach, salmon and fading into a delicate pale pink.

Added to that they smell absolutely delicious!

Floribunda rose - 'Patricia' - blooms half-open

It's a hardy floribunda rose, mine's in a pot and stays outside over winter and has always survived well. Like all roses its prone to the odd outbreak of greenfly, but this year I have been careful not to overwater or overfeed (which encourages rapid growth of soft tasty shoots that greenfly love) and I haven't seem any greenfly on it so far. Maybe the exceptionally dry weather has helped.

Floribunda rose - 'Patricia' - blooms fully open

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has some organic tips for dealing with greenfly. I've heard that introducing ladybird larvae can help but if anyone has tried this and can recommend I'd love to hear about it.

I bought my potted rose about five years ago from Country Garden Roses.

Garden Snapshot - July 2013

Here's the garden today. The dry weather means the delphiniums are wilting somewhat. The bindweed is starting to take hold and some self-seeded hollyhocks are starting to dominate the view.

The fuschias are just starting to open and the cream rose has passed its best, although a splash of colour is provided by the sweet williams and the pink rose on the rose arch.

Garden snapshot July 18th 2013

Plant of the week - Strawberry 'Cambridge Favourite'

Everyone knows you can't beat British strawberries when they are in season. And even better when you can pick them yourself and eat them within seconds of them being picked! Much tastier than the supermarket varieties which have been chilled, travelled and sat around in plastic punnets, the taste of warm fresh strawberries reminds me of going on 'pick your own' expeditions as a child, where the object was to eat as many strawberries as you could without being sick instead of popping them in the basket to pay for them.

I bought three strawberry plants from my local garden centre 'Garden Pride' four years ago. From cultivating the runners and allowing them to spread, I now have a 3 metre long bed full of strawberry plants - the result of my daughter planting twenty plants in the ground two years ago.

First bowl of strawberries 2013 - 'Cambridge Favourite'

I don't give them much care, although they do get attacked by slugs - the wet summer of 2012 meant that most of the strawberries were eaten before they were ready to eat. This year the slugs haven't had much of a chance as July has been exceptionally hot and dry, instead there are a plethora of woodlice eating themselves little hidey-holes in the delicious red berries - disappointingly, some of the reddest berries turn out to be hollow on closer inspection! They taste delicious, even when they aren't quite the traditional pillar-box red - but have to be eaten quickly as they don't last long chilled.

I read that strawberries aren't technically berries. I remember learning in school about the anatomy of a buttercup flower, which is related to the strawberry I think - where the seeds are on the outside of the enlarged flower receptacle. Strange but true!

Plant of the week - Delphinium 'Pacific Giants Mixed'

I tried growing these delphiniums from seeds when I was about twelve years old and can still remember my failure and disappointment to this day. Nigella and calendula were my limits of horticultural expertise way back then.

So of course there's a little bit extra in my smile when I look at these now in my garden, having managed to successful germinate and nurture them to bloom at the age of erm.... twelvety-something. Delphiniums are not the easiest to germinate, but after following the instruction to cover with vermiculite, place the seed tray inside a clear plastic bag (and then kept inside) eventually paid off. I now have about six handsome specimens, which somehow all appeared as shades of blue despite the multicoloured affair shown on the seed packet.

Delphinium 'Pacific Giants Mixed'

My trick to keeping them going has been to protect the young shoots of the plants every spring by means of copper rings. I now have a fine display of blues at the back of the border.

Best of all - bees love 'em! I got my seeds from Thompson and Morgan.

Plant of the week - Sweet William 'Sooty' - Dianthus barbatus nigrescens

Sweet william is a favourite of mine, but this variety puts a twist on the traditional cottage garden classic. I originally bought seed packet of both a mixed assortment and this 'black' variety. After the initial wait of sowing seeds and nurturing them to their first bloom in their second year, they now seed themselves and appear in the garden in various spots spreading their cheery pink, white and red cushions of blooms which of course are a magnet for bees and butterflies.

Sweet William 'Sooty' - Dianthus barbatus nigrescens

The rich velvety tones you can see in this photo are actually from a third generation sowing of 'Sooty', so this offspring is not true to the darker blacker originals, but it has a beauty of its own making, a deep intense red that Anish Kapoor would be envious of. The stems have a dark ruddy-purple hue as do the leaves, making them a fantastic plant to contrast against a pale foliage or white flowers.

I don't treat these as biennials, but more like the perennials they really are, so I keep them going for a few years. They do get a big straggly from their third year but if they are mixed in with other similar hight plants (mine are next to the crocosmia and contrast well with their dagger-like leaves) then you wouldn't notice their raggedy behaviour.

I bought the original seeds from Thompson & Morgan.