The Mitcheldean Garden 2023
Rose Garden RIP?

This page is part of a series of garden blogs from 2023. Click here for the index.

Unlike Lynn Anderson back in 1970 I did promise Yuehong a rose garden and it happened in 2012 since when no set of summer blogs has been complete without multiple images of them. In recent years they have increasingly struggled, even the classic English roses from David Austin. For a long time we assumed that the culprit was the hot dry summers which have become the norm in the UK. In the last year and a bit, it has become clear that the culprits are actually  the roe deer and the muntjac deer which have taken to invading our garden. Our theory is that they were quite happy in the Forest of Dean nearby until the pandemic brought a flood of visitors to disturb them. Now they have developed a taste for luxury dining I doubt they will go back...

There is nothing we can do about the front garden which can't be enclosed but at the back we first added higher fences which seem to keep the roe deer out but as the roses are still being devoured, I am in the course of adding ground level fences along the permeable lower parts of the leylandii. It's a vile job digging post holes in a rocky hillside but it's the only weapon I have left in the armoury. The pictures below are possibly the effective end of the rose garden, only those which are next to the house seem to be immune.

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The blue moon at the south end of the rose line is not very healthy which is not surprising given what nibbles it but it still blooms. The wonderful David Austin roses are quite 'skeletal' and have limited lovely blooms.

Here are a couple more in the front, we are enjoying them while we can.

It's the shrub roses that have been hardest hit, many in the front of the house are gone now.

The rose next to the front door is seemingly unaffected and our other 'blue' rose is semi-wild, only the muntjac seem interested in it and most of the leaves are too high for them.

As far as the roe deer are concerned we were unsure how these by now rare visitors to the back garden had arrived. The main possibility was from behind the summer house which I had considered unlikely before, but it now needed plugging. As the wire would start a metre and a half above ground we needed substantial posts, the wire behind is what's left from 2021. We had a long debate about the northern leylandii hedge where the bottom part looked 'leaky'. My initial thought was to use chicken wire but when we got some home it became clear that it was not the answer. It was time to invest in more fence posts and stock fencing although the former would be at ground level which would mean we could use less substantial posts.

I cut back the hedge so I could get the fence further over but I soon found I had to be careful not to foul the underground electricity cable leading to the summer house - at least I had known roughly where it was. Working conditions were less than ideal with stones of all shapes and sizes. The excavated material went into the plastic buckets (two per hole) and the job would have been near impossible without our trusty auger. At my age each of the narrow 70 cm wide metre deep holes took nearly half a day because of the larger rocks. So far I have dug 4 out of the 8 needed and the wire fence will wait until all are buried. The hedge is not straight and neither is the cable so it's no wonder the poles are not in a straight line. The slope is not even either and I suspect that the fence will need burying in places which will probably be no bad thing. 

I rate the project as 'urgent' but reporting on it is definitely not as there will be few other developments for several weeks. While the south hedge used to be permeable, it's possible that the building work in #35 will have closed access but I doubt it and will have to consult our neighbours. I can't see them putting their own supplementary fence in and I expect to have to do something similar to the above again...

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