POETIC JUNE POSIES
“How rapidly new flowers unfold—as if nature would get through her work too soon.”
-Henry David Thoreau
June is the ideal month for flowers, where everything starts blooming in rich profusion. With roses of every shape, variety, and hue, the world takes on a rosy glow. June is the best month for tending to rose bushes in our yards, picking wild roses, buying bunches of them from farmers’ markets, and even planting new ones. It’s also the season for giving bouquets of roses since June is the official birth month for the flower. Summertime is also perfect for reading poetry about flowers and for writing your own. If you’re a flora enthusiast, keeping a journal or herbarium is a wonderful and fitting pastime. “Thoreau’s Wildflowers” provides great inspiration for anyone who aspires to be a naturalist. His account of June wild roses notes that “we are liable to underrate this flower on account of its commonness. Is it not the queen of our flowers? How ample and high-colored its petals, glancing half concealed from its own green bowers. There is a certain noble and delicate civility about it, not wildness…I bring home the buds ready to expand, put them in a pitcher of water and the next morning they open and fill my chamber with fragrance. This found in the wilderness must have reminded the Pilgrim of home.” For bountiful bouquets to offer as the perfect present this June, Chelsea Flowers has roses in every colour, including white, pink, burgundy, red, orange, and yellow.
Wild roses are in a category all their own. Since they’re not hot-house flowers, they retain their unmistakable sweet (and sometimes a little spicy) scent and make the most gorgeous bouquets and ornamental flora. Climbing up a trellis or arbour in a garden, covering the side of a house, a white picket fence out front, or filling beds with hallucinogenic colour, rose bushes are beloved by everyone. You don’t have to be a horticulturist to plant and easily maintain roses. “The alpine dog rose has many names, including the mountain rose and hanging fruit rose. It’s a compact shrub that can grow more than 6 feet tall with straight, bristle-like spines. It has an extended flowering season starting in early May and extending until late July.” Some other wild rose varieties to try planting include the apothecary or “gallica rose” which, as you can glean from its name, is a popular ingredient in potpourri and other remedies such as rosewater and essential oils. This is the oldest cultivated rose and its fruit or “rose hips” are exceptionally high in Vitamin C.
“The cinnamon rose is easy to find in the Northeastern United States, and it enjoys growing in meadows and fields where it will receive plenty of sunlight. It produces brightly coloured flowers with smooth stems.” This makes it ideal for picking on nature walks. For an aggressive grower that produces copious blossoms to light up any garden, try the dog rose. For hardy, disease-resistant plants, try knock-out, tufted, or Japanese roses. “As the name suggests, the Japanese rose is native to Japan, Russia, China, and Korea. It can grow up to 6 feet tall and enjoys moist, slightly acidic soil. Plant it in full sun for more flowers and better disease resistance. It’s a hardy plant perfect for the Northern United States, where it can get quite cold.” The tufted rose can bloom anywhere in the US throughout the entire summer and is a friendly asset to the environment as it attracts lots of butterflies and bees. To ensure that your roses thrive, prune your bushes by cutting just above a five-leaf cluster. This will ensure that more healthy buds propagate, so your rosebush will look full all summer and into the fall. Existing roses need pruning before summer begins (about the time forsythia starts to bloom). Don’t overwater your roses; make sure to soak the roots when you do water, but overhead watering (as with a sprinkler or hose) can diminish the quality of your roses and cause black spotting. As for fertilizer, many swear by eggshells and Miracle-Gro.
“I climbed the dark brow of the hill; the steep was studded with starry quills, exhaling fragrance on the night.” -Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The yellow diervilla or “bush honeysuckle” can grow up to twenty feet tall and is actually considered invasive; it can cover entire swaths of forest. While a woodland filled with the sweet scent of honeysuckle is intoxicating and one of the finest things about summer, there are some varieties to plant that are easier to manage. “Heaven Scent honeysuckle woody climber is known for its dark green oval leaves in opposite pairs. Its pale yellow and white flowers and pale pink bud bloom through summer and into early autumn.” For more classic white and yellow flourishes, try the Burmese, Common, or Fragrant honeysuckle varieties. For pink varieties, plant Mexican and Scarlet Trumpet vines. Honeysuckle is so heady in its fragrance that it was thought to arouse female desire in English country lore. Trumpet-shaped flowers filled with nectar aren’t only for birds and bees to enjoy; the Lakota people used to famously drink the honeyed liquid of coral honeysuckle.
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