LATE BLOOMER

Now that his once largely green garden is bursting with colour, Nigel Slater wonders why it took him so long to fill it with flowers

- PAUL WEARING

This summer, the rose that had never flowered, the one I had long ago marked for the compost heap, suddenly came into bloom.

Not only did it do so splendidly, with half a dozen buds opening in succession, it turned out to be the much sought-after Rosa Munstead Wood (= 'Ausbernard'). To see those plump buds opening into cushions of deepest burgundy velvet has made me happier than almost anything else this year.

The slightly-too-thin stems of my Munstead Wood and their heavyweight blooms sit close to my other 2025 gardening surprise: the soft caramel, white and egg-yolk-yellow of Iris 'Benton Susan', the flower I thought I could never grow. This garden has always felt too shaded for irises, but my fears have been proved wrong. All the Benton irises I planted last spring have come good, save a tiny rhizome that needs another year or two to plump up. When the flowers of 'Benton Susan' and Munstead Wood fall close together, as they did after a windy night in May, the result is perfect harmony.

A couple of shy