Article Background

As with so many things in gardening, practices are full of fable and old wives tales, handed down from one generation to the next. Rose care is no different. 

Famous gardeners frequently tout the benefits of deadheading your roses - to get them to re-flower... or pruning them in a very particular, time-consuming fashion - to shape the bush properly... and so on and so forth. It's all nonsense.

As an academic with a background in garden writing, I pitched the editor of 'The English Garden' with an idea for a mythbusting article on how to care for roses, scientificially speaking. She loved the idea, gave me the guidelines on writing for her publication, and we were off.

One of the requirements was that the article featured quotes from experts. As such, I interviewed Tony Hall, Head of Gardens at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, and Dr Linda Chaulker-Scott, Associate Professor of Horticulture at Washington State University.   

Here is the resulting article...