![]() ![]() Credit: Danella Bevis /The West Australian Camera Icon Seamus Johnston in his garden at Newlands, which is named Mostly Roses Garden. Seamus Johnston's Mostly Roses Garden at Newlands. Now that I use the weeds every winter, I’m having to apply less fertiliser to achieve the same result,” he says. Instead of hacking back his roses, Seamus focuses on his soil, cultivating a surprising cover crop for his summer mulch - weeds! In hot, dry WA, there’s no need to be as heavy-handed. This advice, Seamus tells me, works for rose gardens in England, where fungus-breeding moisture is an issue. ![]() I’ve always dutifully removed every inward-facing branch, cutting each bush back about a third to the nearest outward-facing bud. If you (like me) have been following typical rose pruning advice, you probably prune heavily, too. “A lot of people prune very heavy,” he explains. These are no shrinking violets, no wiry shrubs. But his roses aren’t like the roses I’m familiar with. Seamus grows Damask, Iranian, David Austen and Tea roses, and heritage roses from China that fade from butter yellow to dusky pink as they age.Įvery rose I’ve ever seen seems to have found its way into Seamus’ patch. If you’re struggling to picture the scale of a garden filled with 1700 roses, I don’t blame you. Credit: Danella Bevis /The West Australian Credit: Danella Bevis /The West Australian Camera Icon Seamus Johnston's Mostly Roses Garden at Newlands. I’ve now got about 1700.” Camera Icon One of Seamus' favourite roses - souvenir de la mal maison. Then I started going crazy planting roses. I pulled out a lot of trees that were in the wrong place. “When I got here the whole thing was planted on weed mat, which is a disaster long term, so I had to remove all of that. “I came here just over 20 years ago,” Seamus tells me as we meander past beds of rambling roses. From the road in summer, it scarcely looks real - billowing clouds of blooming colour cascading down the hillside. It is a magic crystal garden on steroids, but better: it’s filled with roses. ![]() Did you love them, too? As a sensible grown-up, do you want to rekindle the specific sense of wonder they inspired? If so, you need to look no further than Seamus Johnston’s Mostly Roses garden, perched on a hill overlooking the South West Highway. ![]()
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