Dorothy Perkins Climb Our Fence
Most of the year our garden is shrubbier than it is flowery. Only in summer does it really give me a choice of blooms to cut for the house. Right now it is offering Shasta daisies, dahlias, roses, lilies and hydrangeas –a plethora of choices by my standards!
Even so, I’m hard pressed to actually take scissors in hand and go out cutting. I love seeing the flowers in situ – color super-imposed on color and all brightly contrasting with the green expanse of lawn. I’ve always felt that way and, for that reason Nyel reluctantly gave up one of his raised beds in the vegetable garden so that I could have a “cutting bed.” It is now an abundance of dahlias but, predictably, I have a hard time cutting my bouquets out there, too. They all look so happy right where they are!
Early Morning in July
Nevertheless, I manage to keep flowers on the dining room table and in the silver bowl on the mantle most of the time. Dahlias and daisies last the longest. Hydrangeas, even using all those smash-the-stem tricks, seem hard pressed to look fresh for more than a day. Ditto our old-fashioned roses, especially the Dorothy Perkins. I’ve given up cutting them entirely. They look so lovely along the picket fence and tell me clearly that they do not want to go inside the house.
And then there’s the whole thing about flower arranging. I never seem to have the right combinations available so I take the easy way – mono-bouquets. I’ve had the fleeting thought that I should actually take a class or, at the very least read a book, and then plant my garden accordingly… Yah sure you betcha!
Like you, I enjoy my flowers in the garden. I used to treat myself to cut flowers from the old lady (whose name escapes me) who sold them along Sandridge.
Love, love, love those cheerful nasturtiums! Thanks for sharing your garden.
Cuzzin Sydney, back at the beginning of June I noted an area on county/private land here in western Fairfax Co, VA where off the side of the walking trail there was a burst off bright pink color from some sort of double rose that was going wild in a patch more than 50 ft. in diameter. I surmised that they were Dorothy Perkins that must have been planted what I would guess more than half a century ago when there was a home (long since evacuated and demolished) in the area. I was impressed that they lasted in their full glory at least two weeks. I read online that the Dorothy Perkins was one of the first successful hybrids developed in 1901 by what has become the Jackson & Perkins company. I also read that they do have the tendency to revert to a wild state if left to their own.