Purple and yellow and...?

It's nearly rose time. Nearly time to plant and nearly time to prune. I am a bit ahead of myself this year, because Babe #2 is due when all this should be happening so I'm quite keen to get things done before s/he arrives and I am pinned to the couch for the next six months.
I made myself a short-list of roses that I'm interested in (all climbers, this time). I couldn't help noticing that SP has annointed it with her own ideas... Is that a 'no' to Tess of the D'Ubervilles, or a 'yes,' I wonder?

I have three roses arriving soon: The long-lusted after Reine des Violettes for the front garden, a Strawberry Hill, also for the front garden, and a Munstead Wood for out the back. I used my usual buying strategy for these plants, which goes: Buy now, work out where to plant them later. 

Now, I have this section of front garden along the eastern fence, which looks endlessly crappy. The soil is particularly rubbish (sandy, water repellant, and dry dry dry), and the heat from the sun in the west over summer fries everything when it reflects off the fence. When we first bought our house I planted a banana passionfruit here. There's an old post here, when I was still optimistic it would work out! Anyway, the vine grew but never especially well. It never had a single flower, and obviously never any fruit! So, this week I pulled it out. Bang. Gone. Poor bugger, but them's the breaks.

(This shot is post-passionfruit removal, but before I'd done anything else)

 

I still want a garden bed along this fence and I have two main issues to address: the heat and the soil. For the heat - and I'm reeeeally hoping this works - I put beige-coloured shade-cloth along the fence, thinking that beige would be the least conspicuous. Then I stepped back and thought, 'Good Gods, that looks awful!' 

But, fortunately, looking at that section from further away it doesn't seem quite so bad, a bit shielded by the little ornamental plum tree (reddish brown tree) and the Acacia iteaphyllas on the neighbour's side of the fence (very pretty yellow shrub/small tree, terrible invasive weed in the Adelaide Hills, and many other regions of Australia...)

 

To help amend the soil I added several bags of neutral compost, most of a bag of cow manure and a few handfuls of Dynamic Lifter pellets. For good measure I found some worms in another area of the front garden and gave them a new home in here (a good indication of the poor nature of the soil: there were no worms at all!)

 

Then, to plants! Roses, obviously, where this disjointed post started. I want to put a small climbing rose at the bottom left of the photo, but which one, or what colour? That small shrub that I've left in place is a Myoporum batae, very pretty weeping plant which should make it to several meters tall (though I'll probably keep it smaller). Great plant for dodgy conditions. Next plant in line is a new Graham Thomas rose I couldn't resist getting from a Big Box hardware store. It's not strictly a climbing rose, but can get to over two meters tall and it's becoming one of my absolute favourites, see why? Man, I love that yellow...

(This is not my picture! I got it from here: http://placespill.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/graham-thomas.html)

 

Next in line will be my Reine des Violettes, which I'm hoping will end up looking like this:

(Again, not my picture, this image is from here: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/rosesant/gal0508135015639.html )

And that is the end of that space. Underneath there is currently a ground covering Eremophila 'Augusta Storm,' which I left because it was growing well and an Atriplex semibaccata (two more good plants for dodgy dry and hot conditions). I found some red 'Mrs Bradshaw' geums - my latest plant obsession' so I popped one of those in as an experiment, since I have no idea how they grow.  It's not a big space, really, but I'd like the purple and yellow roses to contrast (along with the mystery #3 rose... suggest colours/varieties to me! I'm leaning towards a red/crimson, maybe a Blackboy rose?)

If at first you don't succeed...

...Try, and try again.

Or, in the case of gardening in difficult climates and soils, do some research before spending any more money!

When we first bought our house, I ran out and planted a number of things. Mostly I got lucky, but one of my first failures was a couple of blueberry plants.

Mistake #1: Planting them up against that blasted (and blasting hot) Western fence. I've lost many plants against that fence now, and those that survive do not thrive over summer. All that radiant heat is a bad idea for nearly everything. Not to mention that a lot of blueberries are not very heat-tolerant at the best of times.

Mistake #2: Blueberries like acid soil, which is in short supply in nearly all of Adelaide and surrounds. I'm lucky: the soil in our yard happens to be a little bit acidic with a pH of around 6.2, except in gardening circles that's practically a neutral pH. Blueberries like a pH of between about 4-5.5. That's just not something I can provide for my plants in the ground, and I'm not about to go faffing about trying to alter it (too tiresome, potentially expensive, and a never-ending exercise).

The solution? Pots! And a couple of plants which hopefully will be a little more heat-tolerant (or at least are low-chill varieties).

Today I went out and bought four new blueberry plants (because I have four big pots to put them in). I had a chat to the girl at the counter about the plants, and she thinks these four should be OK in my area (hills, but not the cold-cold hills further behind Adelaide.)

My three 'real' blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum) are 'Denise', 'Northland', and 'Sunshine blue'. They are all Northern Highbush varieties. I also have a Chinese blueberry (Vaccinium gaultheriifolium), which is a bit of an experiment as it's different to the other blueberry species commonly grown.

I also spent what felt like a small fortune on special 'rose/camellia/azalea etc' potting mix especially for acid-loving plants. I tell myself it's OK, because my SP adores blueberries and inhales them by the punnet, and they are usually really expensive to buy, and I've spent about 12 punnets worth of blueberry money on my plants and potting mix. If this goes well, within a few years we should be set up for fruit for most of Summer and Autumn, which will be super-nice!

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PS. The other little plants in the right of the picture are my latest obsession: Geums/Avens. I like the red ones, but I stumbled across these three yellow plants of the cultivar 'Lady Stratheden' at my local $2 shop and snapped them up as an experiment. Impulse buys being what they are, I haven't yet decided where I'm actually going to plant them..