Do I give up on my David Austin roses?

Hello everyone,

As autumn is here, and things are starting to die back, I am taking a critical eye at a lot of my plantings. I made a reasonable investment over two years in David Austin roses, mainly bare root.

Bit of background - I am on the coast (Wirral) and I do have poor sandy fast draining soil. I did discuss this with David Austin and they showed no concern other than mulch, feed and water. All fine. I went ahead and bought a lot - I love roses. I followed the planting instructions from David Austin to the letter.

Susan William Ellis - thin, spindly. Die back
Roald Dalh - never puts on any real growth.
Lady of Shallott - stalled all year. Die back
Sceptered Isle, think leggy and about two blooms this year!
gentle Hermione - she seems good and strong. lots of fresh growth
generous Gardener - again, seems to be performing a lot better.
Poets Wife - not doing too badly in all honesty.

However - beating all of them by a country mile is my Eustavia Vye - brilliant. Why? Planted in a bit half barrel container.

What I am noticing is that the majority have done poorly. Thin and spindly. Whenever a new stem comes up from the ground it tends to die back quite quickly. Leaves never looking great. Oddly they all took off really well after planting, and for the past year or so entered a massive sulk.

I am now wondering - after having read a lot on the matter - whether my conditions are just _too_ hostile for these roses. I felt reassured at first (naivety) that I could improve conditions, but experience is telling me otherwise.

Love some honest opinions, even if its disheartening and ultimately expensive!

 

Hi @Nickoslesteros

After 2 years, I would have expected them to be doing much better. Mine have been performing well from the start, though they reach their full potential around the third year. I am close to the sea as well but I have clay soil.

If you have enhanced the soil, mulched and pruned when advised, and if they get enough sun, water and fertiliser, then it does make me sceptical as to the effects of the sandy soil. I am particularly surprised by Lady of Shalott - she is normally a monster

One option could be to move the 4 that are struggling to containers - or your favourites of the 4 if you can't do all four.

Another option would be to give them one more year and give them a lot more mulch and fertiliser (the fertiliser /rose food will need to wait till the growing season though). And a pretty hard prune in February.

 

Roses are greedy, hungry plants that don't like to be thirsty and usually need a good rich soil so if you didn't dig in masses of well-rotted manure and garden compost before planting they're probably starving now.

I suggest you try giving them a generous scattering of bonemeal for root growth along with a good rich mulch of manure/compost/leaf mould this autumn to improve soil structure. repeat in spring but this time with blood, fish and bone, not just bonemeal so the whole plant benefits and mulch again to continue umproving structure and feed the soil. It's always best to improve and feed the soil rather than rely just on feeding your plants but I'd also add a liquid feed of organic rose or tomato feed and a weekly spray of liquid seaweed on the foliage as a tonic.

Repeat both threatments every year as necessary till your roses decide to grow or give up then give them a good mulch at late winter pruning time.

There are persica roses being introduced now that do cope with drier conditions but, as far as I know, don't have the perfume of DA roses but if you're happy just tohave flowering roses they are worth considering if your existing stock doesn't repond to all the TLC..

 

I have removed all my DA roses for the same reasons. Dry, sandy soil doesn’t suit them regardless of how well you try to improve the soil in my experience. The persica roses that @Obelix-Vendée mentions are the only ones that I have had any success with. Style Roses have a good selection, have a look at their Bee Friendly range. Planting with mycorrhizal fungi also seems to help.

 

I'm surprised by Lady of Shallott too. One of my daughters lives an hour from Bordeaux and she has sandy soil. It gets pretty hot in summer. There was a watering ban last year. She has Lady of Shallott and it has grown pretty big and has masses of flowers.

 

I sometimes wonder whether David Austin became victims of their own success.
I'm sure that the older varieties back in the day lasted longer and were healthier than many of the newer ones that I've planted in recent years, but that could just be a coincidence.

The only one that seems to buck the trend is Eustacia Vye. Even under the dry conditions this Summer it has stayed healthy and is still flowering now,
I do realise that other forum members will have had different experiences though .

 

This hasn't been my experience indeed @AnniD My most healthy one is Penelope Lively, which was released 2-3 years ago. Second would be Silas Marner, which I think was 5 years ago? Bring Me Sunshine and The Country Parson have also been good.

Personally I have not been impressed with the last two releases though (in general, not specifically about health).

 

It just goes to show @CostasK .

My Bring me Sunshine really struggled this year in spite of my best attempts to keep on top of watering and feeding. The sawfly caterpillars had a high old time whilst my back was turned.

I have a pretty much South facing garden which can get pretty warm at the best of times. This year was something else.

 

My only DA is The Country Parson, which has really struggled this year in the ground. TBH I have been blaming the hot summer.

 

Interesting... Bring Me Sunshine and The Country Parson are both I believe considered to be "shade tolerant", which might go hand in hand with not liking excessive sun & heat?

 

Possibly @CostasK.
This is the second year for Bring Me Sunshine, I bought it in memory of my late Mum. Last year, considering it was the first, it was healthy, no blackspot etc and the flowers were lovely.
This year it was obviously stressed. I'll probably give it another year or maybe think of moving it but the logistics of finding somewhere less sunny could be tricky. Not because I can't find somewhere but it would involve a fair amount of work, removing plants etc.

 

What a lovely way to honour your mum @AnniD

This summer was particularly hot. I live in the North East of England and it wasn't quite as bad here, so that's probably the key difference.

I have mine against a South-facing wall and it's actually in a pot, which is not ideal (the root of a leylandii I murdered is in the ground below the pot). Right now it's winding down for Winter and doesn't look amazing but the months before it did well. I think what also helps is that there are other sizeable plants around it. Could you perhaps achieve a similar effect by allowing some of your other plants around your Bring Me Sunshine to get a bit bigger?

 

It's certainly worth looking into @CostasK .

 

I find DA roses can take 2 or 3 years to get settled and start growing well and need a bit of cossetting whether in the ground or in pots. I've taken cuttings of some of mine to grow in other parts of the garden as they are either no longer carried by DA or not available here and found this year that Fighting Téméraire and Lark Ascending growing in my nursery area in pots on their own roots did better than grafted parents in the ground.

This may be because the pots were fed and watered and had some shade. Their parents are in full sun till 5pm and there's competition from perennials such as bearded iris, Michaelmas daisies, agapanthus and so on.

 

I inherited quite a few David Austin roses when we moved here. It was the first time I’d ever seen them close up (I live a sheltered life) and I was not very impressed with any of them. I still have the Generous Gardener but the others were a weedy lot and got thrown out. The conditions here suit other roses perfectly. Blush Noisette does its nut every year. Ali Baba and Rambling Rector and others too.

My childhood garden was solid clay, the sort you could bake into a brick, and my mother grew spectacular roses of the day, such as Peace.