Flower Garden Lovers

View of an Older Southern Geogia Flower Gardener

The following comments are from a 75-year young gardener in Southern Georgia outside Valdosta. She and her husband have taken a bare piece of dirt with a brand new house on it and turned it into a wonderland that they continue working on as weather permits. They have added onto and completely remodeled the house and added landscaping, fences, structures, and (oh those beautiful) flowers that you would never know just how bare it was just a few short years ago.

There are several lessons that can be learned here. The major one being that just because you are what some people call old (and believe me, that age gets older the closer you get to what five years ago you called old), it doesn't mean you can't have or create a beautiful flower garden. As south-eastern folks know, it gets very hot and very humid there, and if this couple can build a flower garden from the dirt up, any one in another part of the country can. See what other gardening tips and advice lie for you in the following, especially as might apply to the older flower gardener.

From Dorothy, March 19, 2005

I am about a month late with garden work. It has been too cold and wet for this old lady to get out. I usually have to sit on the ground to do my weeding. I did not want to feed the weeds so I am making an effort to get the worst of them pulled and hope to fertilize next week, in fact a couple of the smaller rose bushes were completely covered by some kind of weed. I wish I knew the names of the weeds but I don't. I don't even know the names of several of the flowers. The ink I used to mark them faded in the sun.

Several of the rose bushes are sending up new bushes from the roots so I will have a lot of new bushes to find a place for. Also some of the daylillies need to be divided. They are so wonderful to grow. They reproduce so abundantly and and don't seem to be bothered by too many insects.

I am getting tired of fighting black spot and aphids on the roses, so if they can't survive they can just die or I will pull them up. When I first started planting them (about 4 years ago) I spent money to get antique roses on the assumption that they would be more disease free. That was a mistake. Most of them are not free of black spot here in South GA. and we have a gillion bugs to attack anything.

We have some that are doing pretty good and have learned the trick to propogating them (you can only do this with those that are not protected by copyright). Our Prosperity rose has done very well. It is a white rose and blooms from Spring to frost. We have the Knockout rose in the pink. We have one rose that is growing up from the roots in several places. I bought it locally and the lady said it was given to her without a name and it is doing great and now I will have several new bushes that have come up from the roots to transplant.

Last year I bought the new on the market (I think) rose called "Baby Love". I hope it lives up to its description of being free from black spot. I am tired from contorting this body into positions that it has not been in since early last fall.

© 2005, Dorothy Dinkins

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