Growing Roses & Habitat for Wild-life

I have been known to give an extra bonus with my scented bunches of roses. Fortunately, the recipient of this particular bunch was a lover of wild-life, as the little bonus was a very sweet, but very sleepy, tiny baby green tree frog!! You'll be happy to know that the tiny frog was safely re-located to a nearby garden. It was not unusual to find these juvenile tree frogs sleeping in the rosebuds in our Sunshine Coast Hinterland garden, but I had never imagined one would sleep all the way into a bunch of our heritage roses!

As you might imagine, this is not something I aim to do when I cut our heritage roses for bunching. And, as we no longer live in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland where green tree frogs abounded, the likelihood of this happening here in our new garden in the Hunter Valley in NSW is improbable.

Yet I am not averse to having some wild-life living in and around the garden. In fact, I encourage them as much as possible by ensuring there is habitat throughout the garden among the roses. One of these habitat areas is the small lily pond where frogs lay their eggs in floating clouds on the edges. And on warm sunny days we can often spy shiny damsel and hoverflies flitting down to the water. One of the joys of the pond is watching the delight of our grandchildren as they peer into the water to spot if there are any tadpoles emerging into tiny frogs.

Other areas of the garden are being planted with rambling roses that provide safe hiding places for the numerous tiny blue wren families that live in our garden. These are a special delight to watch as they flit around from their nest in the very prickly Dorothy Perkins rambling rose to the apple tree and back again, catching minute insects on the fly. In addition, I grow flowering shrubs that also have lots of safe hiding places for small birds and insects, like the lovely sasanqua Camellias that provide evergreen shelter throughout the year as well as beautiful flowers for nectar in the cooler months.

So, while my focus is very much on filling our garden with as many heritage and heirloom roses as possible, I am careful not to grow only roses but to interlace them with as many varieties of herbs, shrubs, fruiting trees and perennials as possible. To avoid an overload of disease and pests, it is important to avoid growing just one species of plant, lovely as that might be in the short term. I love the different textures, colours and scents of a garden filled with lots of plants with varying shapes, sizes and growth habits.

This includes growing a range of seasonal plants that flower or fruit at different times across the year, ensuring there is a diversity of food and shelter plants available for birds of all sizes, as well as pollinators and small lizards. And the effect of flowering herbs, such as this blue borage, growing next to the roses is lovely, providing a contrast of texture and colour.

Even mowing the grass unevenly and allowing what some 'tidy gardeners' might consider weeds, such as clover, to grow through the lawns and flower, provides a rich source of forage. Bees adore the flower heads of clover here. There are additional benefits of clover for us too, such as enriching the soil with nitrogen via its roots, and after it has been mown down allowing it to mulch and feed the lawn.

One of the benefits of having a diverse range of plants in the garden is insect and pest control with no need to spray toxic chemicals to control aphids and other 'pests' on the roses. Of course, this does not mean our plants are completely pristine, but I would rather a bunch of herbs and flowers with a tiny nibble in a leaf visible, rather than knowing I was holding an invisible toxic mix in my hand as I arrange the flowers after cutting them from the garden.

It also gives me peace of mind knowing that my grandchildren can run safely over the grass in bare feet and stop to sniff a scented rose here and there. And I know that whoever receives a bunch of our scented roses, fresh or dried, or a basket full of our scented petals, will not be exposed to toxins they may not even be aware of.

So you see, it is a 'win/win' all round to have a garden that provides toxin free habitat for insects, birds and humans; where beauty is not grown at the cost of 'expedient' yet long-lasting toxins polluting our living places and homes.

Now that's something to be very happy about, I think, don't you?

xx Lillian