I am watching a disaster about to happen

I pruned parts of my PHM right back last year as it was out of control. Already this year the new replacement shoots are several feet long and growing at an alarming rate. Once it has finished flowering this year, I shall prune other parts hard back.

I prune my PHM very hard every year and it always flowers like billyho - no problems. We are in a very windy position (S Northants) and it gets really hammered but appears to survive - its amazing how they do. It goes over a huge arch and one day will bring down the arch I think. David Austin roses said it would not flower following hard pruning but they are wrong on this one. Good luck.

By the way, real Summer hasn't started yet, and meteorological summer is only one day old. Your catastrophe happened in the Spring. Summer's going to be great. Think positively.

Nowt you can do about it while you are away, whitewave. So forget about it and enjoy your break. Build up energy for when you get back!

Have ordered a skip for when we come back from holiday, but today I found the tiniest dead chick underneath the rose so there must be nests in there oh dear, this has not been an easy summer so far.

just caught up whitewave, so sorry, gardens are part of us, aren't they? There can be something else as beautiful in the future, but awful just now.

harrigran I would have been very upset to see a lovely garden destroyed by a builder.

We have obviously been very here lucky with the weather.

We moved up here in August 1987 the year of the big October storm down south. It was a windy night here but nothing like it was down in the south.

When I sold mother's house it had lovely gardens front and back, she had beautiful roses and peonies in the front. The back garden contained my father's workshop, rockery, strawberry beds and lots of flowers. The year after the new people moved in they bulldozed the garden, took away all the features and left a flat, featureless lawn. They also took away the front flower garden and filled it with stone chippings, mother would be upset she tended her roses even on the day she died.

Only North West, Nellie. It's still blowing a gale this side of the pennines. On Springwatch they could not get over to the Farne Islands because of the wind and rain.

And us from "Up North" (Cheshire) just had wind and bright sunshine.

I feel for you, I came down this morning and the back patio looked like a bomb site, all my bedding plants that I was hardening off (grown from seeds purchased at the Buchart Gardens in Vancouver last year) were thrown out of their pots and scattered. I could have wept! I have never known North winds of that strength at this time of year.

Yes that it what is worrying me the sparrows certainly use it for cover from the dreaded sparrow hawk, and maybe for nesting. But we've just had a look and it is a goner we think. It has also taken a trellis with a gold heart ivy as well as a summer jasmine. It will all grow again but the hole will be huge for the time. The only thing that's worrying me is the old tree it is clinging to , I can't work out if it is still standing.

Just ordered a skip for when we get back from a few days break next week and costed up some new trellis.

Growing up the front of my old house was an established Ivy tree, originally planted to make the front look pretty; it did not deter this plant from literally taking over the entire front of a terraced house.

I had to have it professionally trimmed every year as it grew upwards and onwards and outwards getting thicker and denser covering a bedroom window (if we allowed it) and crawling on to the roof.

So why keep it then?

It provided an entire housing estate for all the little sparrows. There were lots of nests in it and I am a bit precious about stuff like that Sparrows had gone into a decline at that time, as had starlings and other birds.

When I sold the house, the marketing photos were simply lovely. The Ivy did not stop people from looking, in fact it actually helped to sell the place.

Early in the summer of 2011 we had some really windy weather. The Ivy by now had had it's yearly trim, but the guy who did it said his ladders were not long enough to reach the pinnacle of the roof, and a gust of wind blew underneath it creating a large gap.

We got up in the morning to find the whole of the Ivy had peeled off the front of the house in one piece and was in a massive roll down my garden and driveway narrowly missing the car.

All the sparrows had absconded. Talk about eviction

We had to chop it up and cart it off to the tip. It took a long time to sort the mess out. My car was a right mess inside and full of spiders. My daughter refused to go in it

Then I had to have the front painted, since I had already sold the house. The house was half brick - half render.

The new owners were pleased - said it saved them a job and they would have taken it down, but what was the most amazing thing of all was there was no damage to the mortar on the bricks and everyone who previously said the Ivy was destroying my house had to eat their words x

Greyduster how sad. I left a plan of what was growing and when to prune. We left at the end of March and I feared they'd just hack at the 'sticks'.

They are already remodelling the house, which we knew was on the cards, I fear the garden may be next.

Our new house is just patio, lawn and pond. The previous owners didn't garden, so a lovely blank canvas to play with! ?

X

j52 we also had a beautiful rambling rose in our last garden, covering a large pergola. When the people who eventually bought the house the house came to see it they were very effusive about it. "Doesn't it set off the garden" etc.... I met one of my old neighbours the following year who told me they had removed not only the Rose, but the pergola, the water feature I also had regrets about leaving, the patio paving and the flower beds, leaving just an expanse of grass. It broke my heart, but each to his own I suppose.

When this happened to a friend, the pruned Rose was better than ever the following year. We do get attached to our roses ( it must be the thorns snagging us), the only thing I regretted leaving in my old garden was a 16 year old rambler Perptue Felicite (sp?)

By the way, it's like the south of France here in SW Scotland, too hot to garden!

x

I really sympathise. In the '87 gales we watched as our 5 tall cypresses all toppled into each other and came down. You are just so helpless and powerless. all you can do is watch it happen - and then there's all the clearing up to do Thinking of you. The weather's vile here too.

WW, let's hope you can haul it back up again, back mind the thorns PHM is vicious, I have the scars.

GandTea

My rose is now 3ft off the ground! Oh well ever onward ever upwards or downwards in the roses case!

Will have to crawl to get to the greenhouse.

Horrible on the fens. Heavy rain and very windy. Won't be going anywhere today. The dogs nipped out for a quick wee and dashed straight in again.

Days of beautiful weather in Liverpool, it's certainly not grim up north

"Sorry to 'rub it in'" like hell you are

Just been for a long walk with the dog here at Thirsk. Its wild and windy, pieces of branch falling off the trees. Raining now, a real "Barbour" day !. Wont be going far this afternoon.