The Art of Sustainably Growing Scented Roses for Year-Round Pleasure
I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but ...
Have you ever wondered where your roses come from? Or who grows them? Or even considered how various scented botanicals are created? If you've heard of the 'grown not flown' movement, you'll know that the sustainable floristry movement is gaining momentum worldwide. This is in response to roses being grown overseas in huge glass houses in places like Kenya and flown across the globe to Europe and even to Australia. Roses grown in this way need to survive extended periods out of water, which is made possible by spraying them with chemicals. Because of this, imported roses don't have scent and won't fully open in the vase.
Along with environmental impacts, the importation of roses raises humanitarian concerns, such as poor working conditions and wages and unregulated exposure to chemical sprays. In addition, flowers imported into Australia are required by law to be sprayed with herbicides. For all these reasons I believe it's important to check if your roses are grown locally. Handling and sniffing these roses expose you to a cocktail of chemicals. I've seen the effects first-hand with a bride developing a rash as a result of holding imported roses in her Bridal bouquet.
As an artisan grower of roses, I believe that growing heritage and heirloom roses with blowsy blooms full of scent across the seasons, is a lovely alternative to imported roses. Our lovely old roses thrive in the sunshine, with rain allowed to fall onto the soil at their roots. And I don't grow our roses in stiff rows, allowing them to ramble and climb, smothering arches and fences with their delicious blooms. The roses are allowed to form their natural shape, only pruning a little in order to keep them in good health and from swallowing the house!
Even after only a few years in our new garden, our roses have become so boisterous, so generously covered in lovely, scented blooms that I couldn't help but begin to experiment with how and what I used them for.
Although I love sharing the bounty of the garden with others, growing a garden of heritage roses is expensive. The bare-root heritage roses can be difficult to source, especially the rarer ones. And it takes at least two years before roses are established enough to harvest. At some point, the roses need to pay for themselves.
I have always grown my gardens using sustainable, chemical free methods, and this is the way I choose to grow our roses. I love a slightly wild, cottage-style garden which is why I grow herbs, perennials and shrubs among the heritage and heirloom roses. The variety of leaf shape, density and sizes of the perennials and shrubs add safe habitat for beneficial insects and small birds. It's a joy to watch a family of blue wrens dart in and out of their wisteria and rambling rose hedge. Of course, the flowers also provide food for the honey eaters and bees, butterflies and other beneficials. The added bonus for us is that the small birds and insects act as natural pest control which means we don't need to rely on chemicals and sprays in any of our gardens.
At peak flowering times, like mid-Spring, early Summer and Autumn, there's an abundance of blooms to choose from. This is the best time pick lovely, blowsy bunches of scented roses, generous, garden-style bouquets and sweetly scented posies, not to mention fresh scented petals.
And it's lovely to have all this abundance to choose from for our lovely garden-style Bridal Bouquets. Which is why we offer our Intimate Weddings Bridal Bouquets and Buttonholes, for small weddings with beautiful wedding flowers that frame the Bridal Couple and go onto decorate their intimate wedding breakfast. Not using chemicals means that our garden-fresh bouquets are safe to sniff and hold, and the fragrance from the roses can help calm any nerves before the special event. As a point of interest, did you know that the scent from roses can help ease anxiety? Who wouldn't want lovely, scented roses in their bouquet?
A basket of freshly scented petals can make the most delicious fresh confetti! Or, as an alternative, our 'Scent of the Garden' blend of scented petals, flowers and herbs from our gardens combines a range of lovely fragrances, from lemon, spicy through to balsam! Imagine showering the happy couple with a deliciously scented, colourful shower of petal confetti! And all free from chemicals!!
One of my favourite ways of using our Spring, Summer and Autumn bounty of fresh petals and botanicals is to create deliciously scented Hand-Crafted Pot-Pourri and Botanical Apothecary Blends. I only use what's available in our gardens during these peak seasons of blooming and never buy in dried herbs or flowers. Who knows what they've been sprayed with to keep their colour.
I love to gather fresh scented rose petals, as well as a wide selection of scented herbs, and flowers, by the basketful. This is a lovely meditative exercise and guaranteed to soothe away the cares of the day! All of the botanicals are harvested at the peak of their bloom cycle to preserve as much scent and colour as possible during the drying process.
Then the real fun starts, where I create our Hand-crafted Pot-Pourri using age-old recipes adapted from Elizabethan times. Once the botanicals have been blended with pure essential oils (which I source from reputable suppliers) the mix is cured over several months and released as our Limited-Edition Blend each Spring.
Our Apothecary Botanicals Range is a blend of garden-gathered botanicals that can be used in bath blends, soaps and skin care. I'm still in the early stages of developing this range but watch this space!
Because we allow our roses to flower according to the season, there are gaps during Winter and high Summer when the roses go into a period of dormancy in Winter, or semi-dormancy in the hottest parts of Summer. This is when the dried bounty of earlier flowering flushes is used to create beautiful, dried posies and lovely seasonal wreaths. We also use vines from our own gardens to create the base for our wreaths, which means our wreaths are also fully compostable, with the exception of any ribbon we may have used to finish them off.
These are a very limited offering and only available as the creative mood takes hold at this stage. I'm sure as the supply of botanicals becomes even more bountiful that these will become a more permanent offering.
So even though I've only been gardening in the Hunter Valley for a few years, I have years of experience growing on larger properties, which has made distilling everything into a smaller site has been an interesting exercise! But even though we're a smallish, micro rose farm, growing sustainably has given me a bounty of materials to use in sustainable floristry across a number of different offerings, from lush fresh garden-style bouquets and Weddings Flowers, to dried botanicals and posies and wreaths. Enough to keep this flower farm out of mischief, at least some of the time!
I hope I've inspired your interest in growing a sustainable garden and using its abundance in a range of scented, flower-filled sustainable floristry. I'd love to hear about your flower journey and what you love to create from your garden.
Enjoy,
xxLillian
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