Growing Roses? Now is the Time to Show Off Your Rose Growing Skills
It has been said that growing roses is a labor of love, because we all put a great deal of effort into their cultivation.
It takes a lot of time and energy to grow the perfect rose!
We should all be proud of the roses we grow, proud to share them with others and proud to display them for our family and friends. So how do you show off your skills?
Here are three different ways to become a Rose show-off and share your rose garden treasures.
1. Display your blooms half open.
Cutting buds that are just half open allows them to continue slowly opening for the next few days. They must have started to open, the tiny, thin green leaves below the bud should have started to curl back, or the process will not continue. This pristine, slowly opening bud can easily become an intriguing talking point.
Cut them with a short stem and one clean leaf and use them as individual place settings for your dinner guests, perhaps a different, single color for each place setting. Or use empty votive candle glasses (without the candle that is!) and float a half open miniature rose bud in each glass. This makes a great centerpiece for a dining table especially outside. Or how about floating a large bloom, about two-thirds open, in a large brandy glass? (...with water not brandy of course!) One of the most stunning displays I ever saw was of five pink blooms, not fully open, floating on an almost flat, white smoked glass dish...and the scent wasn't bad either!
2. Photograph your blooms.
Try taking close-up pictures of your open rose blooms. Morning light is best, and remember to remove any damaged petals first. Two dramatic methods of displaying your rose pictures require fairly large scale prints of, preferably, single booms, which could be printed directly from your computer.
One way is to print the picture on to a cloth backing and stretch it across an artists picture frame to make a border-less wall hanging.
The second is to print a large version of your photo but in black and white. This is very dramatic especially in a black frame. Try a Sepia copy for the old historic look.
3. Don't forget your roses at party time.
You have worked hard in your rose garden, and the results were stunning. What better better way to share your success than to eat them!
There are recipes for making rose-water which is used in cake-making and punches. There are recipes for rose-jam and rose-hip marmalade as well as rose-hip syrup and tea. All great additions to a Mothers Day tea, by the way!
And what about party time gift giving? Dried petals and dried rosebuds make excellent pot-pouri, petals can enhance paper making and candle making. You can even use your rose petals in making bath bombs or moisturizer cremes: and how about making rosary beads? Some great gift ideas and a marvelous way to share your roses.
Why don't you show-off your roses to your friends and relatives. Display them, photograph them, use them for gift giving or even to eat! Share your roses with others. We can show you how to achieve all this. You can do it, we can help.
David LeAche is author of http://www.rose-works.com, where you can find out all about rose growing, photographing roses, crafts with roses and using petals, hips and rose-water. FREE monthly newsletter. Find out how this site came to be so popular at http://www.rose-works/about-us.html
