February gardening jobs: plant bare root roses

February 19 2019 | Garden

According to Hever Castle’s Head Gardener Neil Miller, among the February gardening jobs is planting bare root roses.

If you are replacing spent or tired roses with new plants then you need to replace the soil.

As part of their February gardening jobs Neil and the gardening team have just finished emptying two beds in the Rose Garden to fill with some blooms.

One of the beds will be filled with ‘Nostalgia’ a rose with a beautiful vanilla cream centre and cherry red outer petals.

As part of your February gardening jobs Neil advises emptying the soil entirely and starting from scratch. So for a few days, before adding the lasagne soil-manure recipe, the Rose Garden had two beds that looked like two muddy plunge pools!

When doing your February gardening jobs if you would like to know how to make Neil’s ‘special’ manure lasagne – much-loved by the roses at Hever, follow this recipe:

1. Empty your rose bed of soil.
2. Add a lovely layer of manure, then a layer of top soil, more manure and a final layer of top soil. 
3. Add some mycorrhizal fungi
4. Plant your bare root roses.
5. Come summer, enjoy an optional glass of Pimms!