Spanish Lavender.
Am I right in assuming that it’s better to take all the flowers off the lavender to use them so that you don’t end with a whole bush of ugly dead flower heads?
Also, is it ok to cut back the lavender at this time of year, or should I wait until winter? It is growing along with some sort of geranium, and they get along fine, each one fighting the other for space and light, but there is another unknown plant under the lavender and it seems to be suffering from having the lavender growing over it.
Rose.
The people who lived here before obviously didn’t know about caring for roses, or didn’t want to. There are lots of roses but a lot of them are in really bad shape. One bush in particular has lots and lots of grass growing through it, and as I was attempting to clear it out I found some plastic pots with labels showing that they contained “blue fescue” tall grass, indicating that they actually planted the grass around the rose bush. Probably as a result of this, the rose has some kind of white mildew-ish stuff on it (please tell me what it actually is). Now, the grass is all grown in around the roots of the rosebush, so as much as I pull it out the roots will still be there.
How can I rescue this poor rose?
The whole rose bush
An example of the mildewed leaves
What I found under the rose bush:
The underneath of the bush after half an hour of clearing (arms full of thorns!)
