It's a Dog's Life: Enjoying the Flowers

As the garden is in full summer bloom, Teddy muses over the variety of flowers and discovers that some have very interesting names, as Helen Stockton, his human translator, explains

At this time of year, the garden is in full spate and keeping ‘Them Indoors’ occupied. ‘Her Indoors’ flits around deadheading, tying things in, weeding, trimming and watering, whereas ‘Him Indoors’ cuts the lawn and does other stuff with garden machinery. Our job is to bark at anything furry or feathered in our role as pest deterrent operatives, drape ourselves in any shady patches and supervise all the activities, particularly those of a barbequing nature, closely.

‘Her Indoors’ is very fond of her flowers and goes to some trouble to cultivate different varieties so that she has a constant supply of blooms throughout the year. It all starts in the spring with the snowdrops, daffodils and tulips and then the floral baton gets passed to shrubs such as flowering currant and forsythia. Apparently, each month has its own named flowers, and this month is delphiniums and water lilies. We have the latter in our small pond, but we haven’t got any delphiniums as they don’t survive the ravages of the slugs or rabbits very well. It’s a shame as they are very pretty. One of the things we have learnt is that any animal, big or small, who interferes with the wellbeing of ‘Her Indoors’ plants is not popular. It is something for the wandering at will and occasionally digging Border Terrier to keep in mind.

One of ‘Her Indoors’ favourite flowers are roses as they provide colour and scent all summer. We have a wide variety of types: shrub, ramblers, climbers, standards, miniatures and hybrid t’s. Some of them have great names. We have ‘Gentle Hermione’ gently blushing in the border, ‘Aloha’ saying hi to ‘Grace Auskeppy’ who is being graceful in the scented garden, ‘Tottering by Gently’ doing just that in the front garden and ‘Princess Anne’ waving regally through the front window! And that is just a few of them.

‘Her Indoors’ would love to have a rose named after her, but the apprentice Bear and I have already succeeded on that front. There is an American rose called ‘Teddy Bear’ which, apparently, is a miniature with russet flowers. I wonder if you can get it in this country and, if so, why we haven’t got one. Our predecessor, Rolo, doesn’t have a rose named after him, but he does have one dedicated to his memory. ‘Her Indoors’ took it as a cutting from our previous house. It’s an unruly rambler that used to romp where it chose, so we thought it was an appropriate choice to remember him by in our present home. It’s busy scaling a tree at the end of the garden. We are sure Rolo would have approved, and we all enjoy the flowers.