Golden Bay Rose Society: 30 years
The Golden Bay Rose Society visiting The Trug Maker, Brett Hutchinson, who crafts traditional English gardening baskets. Photo: Jane Bellerby.
The rose has a long history entwined with politics and passion, and is meshed within the world of love, sex, romance and adventure.
Their rosy charm, colours, form and fragrance have held people enthralled for thousands of years, and hybridising, crossbreeding and cultivation have gone on in temperate zones worldwide. Whether stately gardens or those like yours or mine, there is usually a rose somewhere, offering its particular piece of garden magic.
Rose pruning in the depths of winter marks the start of a rose grower’s year, and members of The Golden Bay Rose Society are now looking forward to a profusion of the queen of flowers. Anticipating the first flush of flowering in October and November, they are out tending their often-prickly darlings with judicious amounts of fertiliser and mulch, and adding secret ingredients like banana skins for potassium, which roses like. They’re also spraying if necessary against the depredations of aphids and other sucking insects, and watching the growth of their plants.
Current society president Jenny Borlase says the group is interested in gardening in general and they undertake an eclectic range of activities.
“We meet once a month and our focus is quite seasonal,” she says.
In winter the society has speakers ranging from rose specialists to floral art demonstrators or someone such as Fay Brownlie, who last winter spoke of the problems roses can have and how to combat them. They also visit artisans in the Bay with a gardening focus, as in their recent visit to The Trug Maker, Brett Hutchinson, who crafts traditional English gardening baskets.
With the change of the seasons, from springtime onwards, it’s garden-visiting time. The Rose Society members gather together, carpool and head off to enjoy the spring and summer glory of other gardens.
“We like to see the different ways people garden, the combinations of plants and how others are tending their gardens in the varied climatic zones of Golden Bay,” says Jenny. Having “seriously” grown roses for the last 20 years in her East Takaka garden, she is now developing a new garden on the hill above Pohara. “It’s much drier here and I can grow plants like proteas, which was out of the question at East Takaka because of the frosts,” she explains. There are roses being planted as well.
Each year the Rose Society joins with its counterparts in Marlborough, Nelson and the Moutere Hills for a Top of the South jaunt. The host area for that year organises gardens to visit at the end of November, when roses are at their very best, and growers get to enjoy the hospitality and variation of a different region.
Being part of a group means a sharing of information, plants and also enables members to bulk buy plants and gardening equipment, such as roses, lilies and gloves.
Some of the 30 or so members of the Rose Society (which has been in existence since May 1957) are regular exhibitors at the annual Golden Bay A&P Show, taking part in the floral art exhibitions, flowers and rose bloom competitions.
New members to the Rose Society are always welcome and those interested can ring Jenny Borlase for more information at 525 8477.
Jane Bellerby
