Rose From The Dead
Sun Herald
Sunday March 30, 2003
It can be hard to believe that the same roots produce buds and thorns.
Three of my roses died in the drought - or I thought they did. One is throwing out new growth, but it comes from low down and may well be springing from below the graft. This means it will be from the rootstock and - in theory at least - undesirable, rather than from the sweetly flowering plant above the graft.
Grafting is a very particular art and not one I have ever mastered. The idea is to gain the benefits of two different kinds of plants. One is selected because of its vigorous roots, the other for its flowers or fruit. Put them together - one below and one above - and you have the perfect match.
Another benefit of grafting can be that you can grow different varieties of plant on the same set of roots. You can have apricots and plums on the same tree. One of the first trees I planted in this garden was a three-way apple - Granny Smith, jonathan and some other variety whose name I cannot remember but which, in any case, has long since been overwhelmed by the other two.
You see, if you graft, you must also prune. Having fiddled with the way things are, you must keep nipping and tucking.
Grafting is a very good thing, you might think. And in theory I am all in favour. But
I find it intriguing that when times are tough, it is the rootstock, deprived of its right to flower, that survives and keeps on going after the plant above has given up.
Nature has a way of defeating our best efforts at engineering. I feel sneakily reassured by this. After all, surely no match can be truly good in which one party never gets to root (so to speak) and the other never gets to flower.
One of the reasons gardening is so endlessly challenging is because it is not only about the forces of nature, although one must certainly engage with these forces in order to do it successfully. Gardening is not about wilderness. It is about civilisation. It is about the manipulation of nature to suit our own ends. This is why bush-regeneration workers sometimes refer to the things they do as "un-gardening", returning the bush to the state it was in before we mucked it up with our grand ideas. I think it is always a partial pleasure, as well as a frequent frustration, to have one's plans defeated by wild stuff. But then I am an unusually chaotic - some would say incompetent - gardener.
But let me return to my roses. I was put in mind of them by a friend who recently remarked that I had thorns. I was rather taken aback. So far as I knew, I had not yet prickled him or caused him any pain at all.
He attempted to clarify the metaphor. He told me he meant that I was not compliant. That I did not give way easily. I think he said that I was strong. In any case, it was enough to get him out of trouble. I said, "You mean I am an old-fashioned rambler, not a well-pruned standard." Whatever the point, it was lost in laughter.
I have never owned a well-pruned standard, although an old boyfriend once bought a rose purely because the variety was called "Margaret", like me. How very romantic that was. What mushy feelings I had as I watched him tenderly dress me with manure, and clip my untidy tendrils.
Unfortunately, the rose died.
My old-fashioned ramblers flower profusely, get caught up with all the blackberries, are never pruned well or often enough, and are not dead-headed by me, but rather live-headed by the children when they want flowers for their games.
I think perhaps I tend to tangles rather than to grafts.
© 2003 Sun Herald