The gardens at Vicarage House are enjoying a makeover over the winter in preparation for our visitors next year. Last weekend we planted new Peter Beales roses. One the front elevation another deep red and fragrant rose (the colour goes so well with the pale Suffolk white brick) – Rose Souvenir de Claude Denoyel.
We planted Wretham Rose which was discovered growing wild in the garden of our friends’ house in the next door village. It should do really well in the ovoid rose bed outside the kitchen window. Louise Clements was located in the same rose bed in front of the house, a perfect hot orange, deeply-petalled and scented. Savoy Hotel – crisp, starched and pink like their napkins and Just Joey – a divine orange in the pots outside the Pool House.
We have just planted numerous Trachelo Spermum Jasminoides – the jasmine with the evergreen leaf which turns red in the Autumn and emanates the most mesmeric scent in summer from its tiny star-shaped flowers. Three large plants in the walled garden to mask the white wall and three along the end of the tennis court which should make your game a bit more exotic and a fragrant experience! There is lots of Trachelo Spermum on the walls in the walled garden, growing around the Pool House bedroom windows. It should be a perfumed summer.
Down the drive, we are adding some more large globes of luscious green box, interspersed with box pyramids. In the Spring, these will be intermingled with Peeping Tom daffodils, which will be emerging before Christmas if the temperatures don’t drop from the prevailing 15 degrees!