Summary from Saturday 10 July, 2004

Listen to the whole programme here

Rose Special
This week Cherrie entered the world of roses with, among others, Dan Pearson, Reg Maxwell, Dermot O'Neill and Barbara Pilcher.

Listen to the programme for all you ever needed to know about roses, personal recommendations of favourite varieties and some new thinking on where roses can make an impact in the garden.


Rugosa Roses
Dan Pearson admitted to a love/hate relationship with roses describing them as incredibly glamorous but also badly behaved.

As Dan doesn't use chemicals disease resistant roses are a useful addition to the garden.

Ruguosa roses make wonderful landscape plants, with their recurrent flowering and their colourful hips, and there is a surprising range of plants. He particularly likes the climging species and another favourite is the incense rose, rosa primula.

Dermot O'Neill loves the old-fashioned varieties and described them as the stalwarts of the garden. He preferred to get away from formal rose gardens and inistead incorporated them into the garden in borders.


More Roses
Barbara Pilcher and Cherrie took a stroll around her garden where one of her favourites was rosa gallica officinalis, otherwise known as the apothecary's rose. This has been used since medieval times for medicinal and culinary purposes.

Barbara also recommended the climbing rose Willaim Lobb and a repeat flowering china rose called Old Blush which has deep carmine pink buds which open out to blousey pink roses.

We also learned of Dermot O'Neill's passion for sourcing old varieties of roses, one of which took him nine years to find! He believed that he was the only proud owner in Ireland but was busy producing new plants to share with other enthusiasts.

To find out more listen to the programme.

Other Rose Facts and Figures
Cherrie also spent some time with Criag Wallace, Founder of the Rose Society of Northern Ireland 40 years ago and to Colin Dickson n of the famous Newtownards Rose nursery.





Listeners were also treated to Reg Maxwell's top rose husbandry tips.



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