Deadheading, deadheading, deadheading

It's that time of year. For the past three weeks, my time at Pashley Manor has been spent endlessly deadheading. It does get a little tedious, and takes a toll on my clothes. Climbing in amongst the roses in the rose garden I did at one point fear that I might be pinned in there for all eternity, like some massive fly in a spiny spider's web. Obviously, I managed to get out, but my Pashley polo shirt now has a number of holes in it.

The good thing about deadheading is that it gives you an opportunity to really look at the roses you're working on.

This is Rosa 'Parade', a number of which are trained around obelisks in the the rose garden. It is a beautiful dark pink, lightly scented and repeat flowering.

Also featuring in the rose garden are some beautiful shrub roses - all repeat flowering and deliciously scented. Many of these are referred to as Portland roses - a term that refers to a group of hybrids derived from a rose named after the Duchess of Portland in 1780.

One of these is Rosa 'Comte du Chambord', with rounded flowers of soft pink petals.

And this is another Portland rose in the rose garden at Pashley - Rosa 'Rose de Rescht'.

And finally, the original mother of them all Rosa 'Duchess of Portland' - a simple-looking rose, with cerise flowers and yellow anthers, still with a lovely old-fashioned rose scent.

To maximise these roses' flowering, the plants are fed with a special rose feed in spring, meticulously dead-headed throughout the summer and fed again in June or July when the first flush of flowers have finished.