Welcome to Albertine

Much of my childhood was spent on a farm in the Avon Valley east of Perth. It was a large property set in rolling hills that led down to the gently flowing Avon River.

I have fond memories of long walks up the steep hills behind the house, collecting mushrooms in tin buckets, sitting in the paddocks making daisy chains, mucking out stables and learning how to cook cakes (a skill I’ve never quite mastered)

View from the farm house.

 My strongest memory however, is of roses, masses and masses of roses.

Pa had two large rose gardens that he tendered with devotion. The farm is where I first learnt about the beauty and magic of roses, my favourites being the climbing Albertine and the tea-rose Just Joey.

Albertine

I regularly helped my grandmother cut and prepare the roses; Iceberg, Golden Bunny, Peace, Abraham Darby, Cecile Brunner and of course Albertine. We would arrange them in crystal or silver vases, their perfume wafting through the old draughty farmhouse.

Albertine is a wonderfully vigorous climbing- rose, it bursts into bloom for about six weeks in late spring and delights you with its heady perfume and its deep salmon –pink colour, with just a hint of yellow in the bud centre.

My climbing Iceburg

So… I thought that I would devote my first post to my darling Mimi, who was such an inspiration to my life, and to whom I think of whenever I tend my garden, which through her has become one of my passions.

Andrina x