In 2015 our garden had mostly modern HT's, Floribunda's, modern Climbers, a few Bourbons, a few ramblers and a few once blooming Gallica's, Damasks, Centifolia's and Alba's. Also some English roses were present: Golden Celebration, Evelyn, and Sharifa Asma.
Our garden is completely enclosed by rather high old brick walls from 1890. This protects the roses against cold winter winds and heavy winds in summer during thunderstorms. But it also has a negative side: The walls slurp water from the garden soil during hot summer days making it really necessary to water climbers against these same walls and they keep the heat in. The latter is good in early spring to protect the young growth and buds against late frost but in summer it gets really really hot in this contained garden. Imagine very hot days in June, July and August with temperatures of 33° Celsius and no wind. It means that in the garden temperatures can soar up to 45° Celsius and more closer to the ground. The result? Rose flowers burning like a crisp. When you have a very big Mme Isaac Pereire rose with 200 open flowers and in the evening they look like brown pot pouri.. it's no laughing matter. But not only Pereire got hit, nearly all our roses couldn't cope with such hot circumstances.
In 2019 Climate change started to show its real face: That summer (in full covid period) the Belgian record for highest temperature ever got pulverized. The old record reigned supreme since 1958 being 38,3° Celsius, in July 2019 the mercury exploded when we had 41,8° Celsius ! The old record was surpassed with more than 3 whole degrees. For my American readers: 41,8° Celsius = 107, 24° Fahrenheit. The entire spring, summer and autumn of 2019 were way above average regarding temperatures but not only that as it was combined with an enormous drought for months and months.
The roses suffered big time. They went into stasis and didn't do anything. Many even dropped their foliage. Only in September they started to recover and bloomed one last time before winter. Hélas, this wasn't a one time event because the summers of 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024 were also way too hot and in 2020 and 2022 the mercury again surpassed the 40° mark combined with droughts. This past summer of 2024 was too warm but extremely wet. Weeks of tropical, moist weather resulted in a blackspot outbreak of Biblical proportions. Climate change doesn't always mean hot and dry, it means much more extremes.
I had to do something as the current roses simply weren't made for this type of extreme weather circumstances. Yes, the once blooming old heritage roses loved the hot, sunny late springs but the HT's, Floribunda's and Austin's couldn't cope. Only Evelyn stood her ground, probably due to her Noisette ancestry. I couldn't just not grow roses so I began to explore the world of the Teas, China's and Noisettes, roses I never dared to plant because they were considered not Hardy enough in Belgium. But this was a myth...
My Mme Isaac Pereire before the heat and drought would hit her hard
No comments:
Post a Comment