What IS he doing now, you might wonder? Rustic jewelry? A fearsome weapon to bludgeon the slugs into submission? Or has he, indeed, finally lost his marbles and replaced them with stones?
No, it is none of the above. Rather, I am trying to make use of one of the presents my Mum left me when she visited this spring: a bag full of stones with natural holes in them. I am using them as a flexible means of reigning in the sweet peas that would rather flop over than climb the twigs and sticks that I provide for them. 
The stones at either end of the string are lopped around the posts of the Uncovered Terrace, and ind a week the sweet peas will have grown enough to hide the string completely.
I always use sisal string to tie up plants; it looks very bright at first, but weathers to a silvery grey with time. Strong enough to last 4-5 years in the garden, the fact that it’s a natural fibre means that it can also go straight on the compost heap when used to tie up herbaceous plants like my sweet peas.
There. Enough about stones on a string. Have a rose:
Last spring I planted ‘New Dawn‘ roses around the two trees that hold up alternately the laundry line and the hammock, and the are growing well and doing exactly what I hoped they would.
At one end the glossy green foliage and the pale pink flowers form a textural contrast to the rough bark of an oak, and at the other they form a colour contrast to the blackish-red leaves of a cherry plum.
By now, most of the plants have at least one branch that had grown tall enough for the deer to leave them alone; this might be the key to growing roses in a deer-visited garden – fence them in until they are tall enough no longer to count as an easy snack!
Very creative, and resourceful!
Well, if somebody’s going to give me a back of stones with holes in them, it’d be a shame not to use them. (Mind you, the idea is not entirely mine; my grandmother uses the same principle, though mainly for vertical strings for climbers where the top of the string is tied to the roof overhang and the stone ensures that the string doesn’t move too much in the wind.)
Beautiful rose.
‘New Dawn’ is probably a bit on the common side, but I completely understand why it’s so popular; it’s pretty, and it grows and grows. Perfect for a garden where the roses need to outgrow the deer… – Or for any other garden, for that matter!